


As Memory Rests

by Cici_Nota



Category: Kamen Rider Wizard
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Communication Failure, Grief/Mourning, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Minor Character Death, Not Everything Has A Resolution, Psychological Horror, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 10:59:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12409041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cici_Nota/pseuds/Cici_Nota
Summary: Nitoh Kosuke's attempt to set Chimera free during the Sabbath does not go as planned. Nobody takes it well.





	1. Intro: What am I to you

**Author's Note:**

> Please pay attention to the tags and to the rating. 
> 
> This happened after someone said "What if Chimera ended up possessing Nitoh when Nitoh destroyed the belt" and I followed fridge logic down all the wrong paths.

_Night of the Sabbath_

Kosuke was fighting the White Wizard, and he was losing.  He had strength and determination and skill, but none of it was doing him any good against an opponent with the strength of absolute conviction borne of desperation. Kosuke dropped to his knees, injured and distracted, and Chimera seized the moment to yank him into his Underworld.

“Nitoh Kosuke,” said Chimera. “It seems that the time has come.”

Kosuke, drained even in his own subconscious, still found the strength to look up and smirk directly at Chimera. “Come to say goodbye to me, then?” he said cheekily. “You have perfect timing.”

“Eh?” Chimera floated closer to the human who had played host to it for so long.

“Outside,” Kosuke said. “There’s as much mana as you could possibly eat. I’m going to let you out, so you go right ahead, and eat as much of it as you can hold.”

Chimera landed in front of its human. Kosuke was hunched over on himself, at the end of his resources, and yet he smiled. “That is an impossibility,” Chimera said.

Kosuke pushed himself to his feet. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“If you let me free, I won’t make any promises about what happens to you or your body,” Chimera said. It had never lied, especially not to its host; it couldn’t.

“It’s the not knowing that’s fun,” Kosuke said, and Chimera felt a surge of affection for the human. “Besides,” Kosuke added, “if it’s all going to be over anyway, I’d rather go out with a bang.” His image glittered and faded as he pulled out of his subconscious.

Chimera cocked its head to the side, waiting to see what Kosuke would do. It saw him catch the White Wizard’s spear in one hand, spitting words of defiance before using that spear to destroy the belt that held Chimera captive. “Go on, Chimera,” he said. “It’s lunch time.”

Chimera surged forward, but there was still a barrier in the way. It hurled itself against it, pushing, until it found the key – a thin silver thread wound through and through all the edges of Kosuke’s Underworld. It would unravel, if severed at a single point. Chimera bit down delicately, feeling the edges of the thread slip free and the barrier fade. Kosuke tumbled back into his Underworld, the glow vanishing, and Chimera nosed gently at his hair. “I’m sorry,” it said, and Kosuke looked puzzled for a moment.

“I told you,” he said, smiling as he faded away. “It was all worth it.”

The barrier was gone. Chimera bolted for the outside world and felt itself open human eyes. It blinked, human fingers twitching around something smooth and hard, soft grass pressing against human shoulder blades. The sky above it, darkened by an artificial eclipse, swarmed with mana just barely out of reach, and Chimera was hungry.

Pushing Kosuke’s human body to its feet, Chimera ignored the White Wizard entirely and plunged Kosuke’s hands into the stream of mana siphoning into the dead and animate body of what had once been a human girl. Mana rushed into it in a steady stream, but there was more. Chimera could feel it, an interconnected web, and if it could just follow the currents, it could reach the rest.

Kosuke’s body was in the way, heavy and unwieldy. Chimera tried to pull free, but it was tangled up and it couldn’t quite let go. The sheer amount of power coursing across the sky was enough to let Chimera slip most of its tether, soaring over the city. Gates littered the ground, felled where they had been standing by the forcible removal of their mana, and Chimera consumed it all. Each of the four pillars that had appeared to Kosuke’s human eyes as light drew Chimera to the richest mana source of all – wizards, each chained to an altar to siphon their life.

Chimera broke the wizards’ tethers, seeing the lines of mana cracking the earth fade away, and the artificial eclipse dissipated to leave brilliant sunlight behind. It roared, triumphantly, declaring its freedom, dimly aware of the wizards slipping off of the altars. The Gates slowly stood in the city streets, and Chimera roared again. It had a world to explore, a world it hadn’t seen in so long, and it spread its wings only to be unceremoniously dragged back to the center of the Sabbath’s stone circle.

The tether that had held it before abruptly pulled Chimera taught, slamming it home into the confines of Kosuke’s body. It howled at Kosuke to properly set it free, but Kosuke was gone. Chimera opened its human eyes again, blinking at the blinding sun. The light was abruptly blotted out and what Chimera vaguely recognized as a spear came toward it. Batting the spear aside, Chimera felt a sting of unfamiliar pain and rolled to its feet.

“You!” the White Wizard said, its voice low and furious, spear leveled at Chimera’s borrowed body. It would have been almost intimidating, if Chimera could ever fear a human. “You’ve ruined everything. Fall into despair and _die_.”

Chimera bared its teeth. “Despair? Me?” It threw back its head and laughed. This little human knew nothing of Chimera, if he thought he could threaten it. It pulled the useless broken belt off of Kosuke’s waist and dropped it on the grass, Kosuke’s rings sliding off to follow. “I’m not going to despair,” it said.

“There’s still hope,” said a voice from behind the White Wizard, and Chimera could see the wizard Soma Haruto step into the circle of stone. “I am the last hope.”

Soma looked terrible, mana levels dangerously close to guttering out, and there was no way he was going to beat the White Wizard on his own. Chimera laughed, low and soundless, as Soma and the White Wizard argued back and forth about how to help the dying doll at the center of the circle, until the White Wizard flung fire at Soma.

 _Ah, it’s over, then_ , Chimera thought, but Soma emerged from the flames in armor.

“Nitoh! Help Koyomi!” Soma shouted, but Chimera ignored him and dove for an opening in the White Wizard’s defense. Soma was not happy, not that Chimera cared. “What are you doing?”

“Just work with me,” Chimera growled, and nearly got Kosuke’s body burned for its inattention. “Fight now, talk later.”

It was hard, to use magic in Kosuke’s borrowed body, but Soma had divided himself into four and it nearly made up for Chimera’s clumsiness. Chimera spent mana recklessly, using energy in place of precision, burning through the reserves it had created more quickly than it would have thought possible. The White Wizard, with all of its experience, handled a five-front assault with almost insulting ease, but Chimera thought it was because four of the bodies facing down the White Wizard had the same mind. Soma thought the same, because after only a few moments, three of them faded away.

“Distract him,” he said, almost too quietly to hear, and Chimera physically tackled the White Wizard to the ground.

Behind it, Chimera could hear the sound of Soma’s magic and feel the prickling wave of another transformation wash over its skin. It looked up to see Soma clad in glittering silver armor, pressing forward with reserves Chimera didn’t think Soma actually had. Chimera plunged its hand into the White Wizard’s back, clawing for the mana it knew was locked inside, and the White Wizard flung him away.

Red stained the back of the White Wizard’s armor, though, the trickle strengthening to a steady stream when the White Wizard set up what was clearly supposed to be a final blow. Reacting, Soma poured strength into a complex grid, launching his battered body upwards in a graceless but effective driving kick. Flames blossomed out, washing the blue out of the sky for several long seconds. Chimera covered its borrowed eyes and looked away.

When the light faded, both Soma and the White Wizard were on the ground, without armor. The White Wizard lay still, a garish arc of red spattering the grass around him, and dissolved into purple light as Chimera watched. Soma was gasping for breath, pale and drenched in sweat, but when the dying doll called his name, he stood and staggered over to it. Chimera turned to leave, picking its way out of the stone circle on its borrowed feet.

Moving came easier, the more practice Chimera had, but it still felt clumsy against the confines of a human form. When the small group of humans raced toward it, it therefore caught Chimera by surprise.

“Nitoh!” one of them shouted, racing toward it in ridiculously bright colors, only to be knocked aside by a smaller human crying that he was so happy his big brother was okay. The smaller human barreled into Chimera, and it went down hard in a tangle of unfamiliar limbs.

“Kosuke?” said the small human, and Chimera blinked at him. He was one of the humans Chimera had saved from being drained to death.

“That’s not Nitoh,” said a third human, and Chimera recognized her as another of the wizards it had freed. It bared its teeth at her, playfully, and she blanched, pulling the small wizard away. “It’s Chimera,” she said, and Chimera nodded at her. She was clever, this one, with a good eye. She would have been a fascinating host as well, it thought, but the wizard just backed away further.

“Chimera?” said one of the humans without magic. A name floated across Chimera’s memory, knowledge left behind. _Shunpei_ , whispered the ghost of Nitoh’s impression. _Rinko. Mayu. Yuzuru. Kawaguchi._ The other human – Rinko – had some sort of weapon pointed at Chimera before the first had finished speaking.

“What have you done with Haruto?” Rinko demanded. “And Nitoh?”

Chimera slowly got to its feet. “I’ve done nothing,” it said, lifting its borrowed chin and straightening its shoulders. The three wizards and Shunpei backed down, just a little, body language responding to Chimera’s display of authority. Rinko was unfazed, her eyes narrowing.

“Then where are they?” she bit out.

“I don’t answer to you,” Chimera said. “Or to your little toy.”

A sharp noise followed by a smoking hole in the ground at its feet was Rinko’s way of telling Chimera she would not be intimidated. It smirked at her. “Soma’s back there,” it said, hooking Kosuke’s thumbs into its belt. “Wasn’t looking too good, the last time I saw him.”

“Mayu, Mr. Kawaguchi, would you please,” Rinko said, but Mayu was already racing back up the path. Kawaguchi followed after a startled glance between them. Yuzuru was still standing frozen where Shunpei had pushed him, Shunpei’s fragile human body acting as a useless shield against the perceived threat.

“What did you do with Nitoh?” Shunpei demanded. The human had courage, much like Nitoh had had, although he wasn’t quite at the same level of adrenaline-fueled thirst for knowledge that Chimera had liked so much about its human host.

“Nitoh Kosuke isn’t here,” Chimera snapped, and saying the words was physically painful, a thousand little spikes jammed into its borrowed chest. Odd, he hadn’t noticed that Kosuke’s body was defective, when Kosuke had been in it.

Rinko lowered her toy, putting it back into its case with an expression Chimera couldn’t identify. She stepped forward slowly, one empty hand outstretched, the other clearly visible at her side. “I’m sorry,” she said, and Chimera recognized an attempt at sympathy.

It ducked back, out of reach. “I don’t want your pity,” it snarled.

“You and Nitoh stopped the Sabbath,” said Yuzuru, stepping out from behind Shunpei. “Thank you.”

“All I did was eat what was in front of me,” Chimera said. “I don’t want your pity, or your gratitude.” It stepped around the humans and continued down the path.

The problem was that Chimera didn’t know where to go. Kosuke had wandered around the city, sleeping wherever took his fancy, declining to be tied down to one place. Chimera didn’t know how much that was by choice or how much had been forced by circumstance, but it meant that Chimera was now free to go where it would. Except that it was trapped by the limitations of this human body.

“What did you do to me, Nitoh Kosuke.”

Chimera found its feet wandering down a familiar path, and it was almost at the door to the shop where Soma spent most of his time before it wrenched itself to a halt. It didn’t want to go inside and place itself in the company of Kosuke’s friends. It didn’t want to be there at all. It veered away, walking until the shop was no longer visible and finally settling at the base of an old, old tree.

Kosuke’s Underworld, impossibly, was still there, and Chimera sank into its glittering darkness. There was no form to any of it, nothing of Kosuke’s memories, nothing but a lingering sense that this had been the truest form of Kosuke’s inner self. Chimera prowled along its edges, searching for a way out, but there was nothing. It was as though nothing beyond the Underworld existed, nothing beyond the passage that would just lead it back up to Kosuke’s body.

Growling, Chimera climbed upward, searching for a crack or a weak point, anything that would let it leave. It didn’t want to be trapped inside a human. This was not the bargain it had made. This was not the agreement it had had with Nitoh Kosuke, although Chimera didn’t think Kosuke was consciously responsible for its situation. Kosuke didn’t have the foresight, for one. Chimera could feel strands of something it couldn’t identify in an infinitely complex tangle linking it to Kosuke’s body. The threads felt familiar, as if they had been holding Chimera for months, but exactly what the reminded Chimera of eluded it. It tugged on the threads, searching for give. There was barely enough leeway for it to slide partway out, but the tether remained.

Chimera wondered, idly, if it just letting Kosuke’s body die would set it free. The body wasn’t doing well, without Chimera animating it; its heartbeat was slow and starting to flutter, and Chimera could see its breathing become irregular. It would only take a few hours for it to die, Chimera thought, and it settled in to wait.

None of the passing humans so much as spared Chimera or Kosuke’s body in its relaxed position against the tree so much as a glance, and Chimera thought perhaps they couldn’t see it. Experimentally, it approached a human or two, baring its teeth and on one occasion reaching out to barely touch one, but the humans just kept walking. Pleased with the results, Chimera licked its claws clean. The human’s lack of reaction to being touched started to weigh on it, though; Chimera glanced over at Kosuke’s body, which was fading in a satisfactory manner, and tried to push the next passing human over.

Chimera’s paw passed right through the human, insubstantial. The human startled, looking around and shivering as if suddenly cold, before walking more quickly. Chimera frowned, and tried with another human, and yet another, but it could touch none of them. It couldn’t reach their Underworld, and it had no access to the mana stored inside the single solitary immature Gate that walked by. “Not satisfactory,” Chimera muttered, but perhaps the situation would rectify itself once it was free of Kosuke’s body.

The body tugged at Chimera, and it glanced back to see that the body had tilted halfway over. The dying process was well and truly underway. _Finally._ Chimera licked its paws clean again, pacing over to inhale the body’s scent. Its heart was sluggish, barely moving, and its breath was nearly gone. It was starting to garner attention from the passersby, now, with one individual attempting to wake it. Chimera smirked. The passerby was getting in the way, though, and not being able to push it aside was frustrating.

As Kosuke’s life faded, though, instead of feeling a sense of separation, Chimera felt itself getting dragged further downward. _If this body dies before I am fully released, I’m going to die with it._ The bonds tying it to Kosuke’s dying body were no weaker; they seemed stronger as Chimera’s strength oozed outward in a futile attempt to remotely keep Kosuke’s body functioning. Howling in rage, Chimera tumbled back into its prison of flesh, letting its mana spread outwards to restore its body to something resembling health.

The interfering passerby kneeling over the body stumbled back in shock as Chimera laboriously pushed itself to its feet. Chimera ignored it, its buzzing words inconsequential. Its mana had been drained by the process of nearly dying, and it needed to feed sooner rather than later. A Gate or a Phantom, either would do. A wizard, even, would provide the energy it needed, but a wizard was more likely to be on its guard, and the only ones Chimera knew were familiar with its new face.

Kosuke had been good at finding Phantoms, Chimera thought. Its limbs were lighter, its gait steadier as it settled back into Kosuke’s flesh, and the mana drain wasn’t quite as drastic as it had thought. Chimera flexed its fingers, moving toward where it thought it likely to find a greater press of people. It hadn’t been able to feel Phantoms from inside Kosuke before, had had to rely on Kosuke to find them, but perhaps its senses had changed as the situation had changed.

Chimera stretched out its awareness, searching for the telltale ripples that would let it know that one of the passing humans was an immature Gate. It had been able to feel that difference, while it had been outside Kosuke’s body, but its senses were dulled now. It could barely feel more than a meter beyond its borrowed skin. _So I can sense the Gates if I slip partly free, but then my prison begins to die and takes me with it._ Truly, an untenable situation. Chimera didn’t think it had quite enough mana left to sustain its borrowed body for another astral trip, not even if it was going to get a meal at the end of it.

Without mana, this body was going to die. Chimera grimaced, feeling the dry crackling sensation of hunger under its skin, and came to the conclusion that the only viable course of action was to go to a known source of mana. It was going to have to hunt one of the wizards, and it only knew one place where it was likely to find them. Chimera abruptly reversed its course, heading for the magic shop, taking a circuitous route it pulled from the remnants of Kosuke’s memories to approach the shop unseen.

Shadows were beginning to sweep the streets, and the lights were on in the shop. Chimera could see figures moving across the windows on the first floor, and although there was at least one dimly lit window on the second floor, no movement was visible there. It sat back on its heels across the street and down a short distance, in an alcove not likely to be immediately noticed should anyone open a window or the door, and considered its best move.

Serendipity smiled on Chimera, or perhaps mischance was laughing at it, because before it could formulate the start of a plan, a familiar energy source came sneaking down the street. Much like Chimera itself, Gremlin was clearly trying to move unseen. It was wearing its human skin, hat tilted at a jaunty angle as it sauntered along the sidewalk. It kept to the shadows as if by happenstance, but Chimera could clearly see what it was doing. It had its eye on something in the shop; the impression of Kosuke still lingering told Chimera that Gremlin had to be stopped from hurting his friends. More importantly, Gremlin was full of mana, was practically made of mana.

Chimera stepped out into the center of the street, planting itself between Gremlin and the shop. “You’re not going in there,” it said.

Gremlin froze, startled, and then relaxed gradually. “Hello,” it said, in a sing-song voice. “You’re not Nitoh Kosuke, and you’re not Beast. You must be the Chimera.”

Talking with food was poor etiquette, Chimera felt, and punched the Gremlin. It went down, turning the initial ungainly tumble into a controlled roll and coming up on its feet. It had discarded its human skin for its true form, green and crackling with mana. Chimera smirked, and cracked its borrowed knuckles. It had not been having a good day, and Gremlin promised enough quality entertainment to improve Chimera’s mood.

At least two downed power lines made it hard to see the craters in the pavement left after Chimera finally subdued Gremlin. The green Phantom was barely moving, thrashing weakly in Chimera’s iron grip around its throat. Chimera leaned closer. “Tell me,” it said, almost conversationally in a voice too low to carry, “what exactly you were planning on doing in there.”

“The Philosopher’s Stone,” Gremlin spat. “It’s going to make me human again.”

“Poor naïve child.” Chimera stroked the side of Gremlin’s monstrous face. “There’s no going back for you.”

Gremlin saw it coming, and its struggles became stronger. It was uncoordinated and still sluggish, and Chimera devoured its mana down to the last dying flicker. A sense of wellbeing filled it as it watched Gremlin’s body dissolve into bilious green embers and finally disappear, tipping Chimera’s borrowed body onto the broken pavement. Awareness of its surroundings rushed back as Chimera rolled to its feet, washing over it like a wave, and it cursed itself for being so absorbed in the battle that it had lost track of what was around it. That was a good way to get captured, or killed, and Chimera dimly remembered that inattention had gotten it caught last time.

“Nitoh!” said Soma, desperation all but radiating off of him as he came out of nowhere. He actually grabbed Chimera by the shoulder and tried to pull it away from where the Gremlin had been. “Nitoh, what did you do?”

“Nitoh isn’t here,” Chimera said for the second time that day. It was just as painful the second time as it had been the first, and it rubbed at its borrowed chest.

Soma shook his head. “No. No, it’s not true.”

 _Ah_ , Chimera thought. _This is denial_. It didn’t know what made it feel more generous toward Soma than the others, but it tried to be gentle. “I’m sorry, Soma Haruto,” it said. The words weren’t quite true, at least not in the sense that it was trying to convey, but Soma didn’t have to know that Chimera was more concerned with the fact that it was trapped in a human body than offering condolences for the loss of Soma’s friend.

“Come with me.” Soma fumbled in his pockets, jamming a ring onto one hand only after multiple attempts. Chimera watched, curious, as Soma reached inside a portal and pulled out a motorcycle. “Come with me,” he said again, sounding almost manic.

It occurred to Chimera that it could build trust with Soma, thereby gaining access to a potential steady source of mana in case its hunting did not go well. With Wiseman – the White Wizard – no longer sending Phantoms to plunge Gates into despair and thereby create more Phantoms, finding mana might be a little harder. Chimera shrugged internally and got on the bike.

Soma drove right back to the location of the stone circle where the White Wizard had been defeated and where Kosuke had died, taking the bike as far up the side of the hill as possible before shuddering to a halt. Somewhat to Chimera’s surprise, the ride had not only not been distasteful, but it had become enjoyable. Soma felt pleasant, against Chimera’s borrowed skin, and it was an entirely unfamiliar sensation. Chimera was almost reluctant for it to end, but Soma struggled free of Chimera and the bike and gestured for Chimera to follow again.

This time, Chimera shrugged externally before walking up the path to the stone circle itself. Soma had been shivering, when he had gotten off the bike, and now Chimera could see it as he walked. It marked the reaction as interesting, and followed Soma nearly all the way to the altar where the doll had been placed. Soma stopped just short of where Chimera had set Kosuke’s soul free, and spun around. “He’s not gone,” he said.

Chimera blinked. “Nitoh Kosuke’s soul is not here,” it said, attempt to be gentle eroded by humoring Soma enough to follow him out to the middle of nowhere in darkness broken by the sullen glow of artificial lights, by the pain of stating again and again that his human host was gone, by his frustration with Soma himself. “Neither is his consciousness. Nitoh Kosuke is gone.”

Soma shook his head again, as though that would change anything. “He can’t be. I can’t lose him, too.”

“Too?” Chimera cocked its head to the side.

Soma opened the hand he’d had clenched at his side, deep indentations carved into his palm and fingers by the object he’d been holding. It was a ring, and Chimera lost interest. It didn’t need rings to access its powers. “This was Koyomi,” Soma said softly.

A moment of searching the memory-imprints Kosuke had left gave Chimera a face to put to the name – the doll that had been kept alive through mana – and it was forcibly reminded of the similarities between Koyomi’s state of being and Chimera’s current situation. “Koyomi,” it repeated, ignoring the parallels. “Your friend.”

“Her _soul_ ,” Soma said, folding his hand over the ring again. It was going to damage him, if he kept clutching it like that. Chimera reached for it and Soma yanked it away as though he’d been burned. Chimera narrowed its eyes.

“I have no interest in your friend’s soul,” it said. “Gremlin was the one who wanted the philosopher’s stone, not I.”

A crystallized soul represented a lot of power, though, and Chimera might be able to use such an artifact to break free of Kosuke’s body. It still didn’t wish to cause Soma more pain, for reasons it didn’t quite understand, and so the statement remained true – Chimera had no interest in the doll’s soul, as long as it remained in Soma’s possession.

“Gremlin,” Soma was saying. “Gremlin was there for this?” His grasp on the ring loosened slightly, and he looked up at Chimera with an expression so painfully raw that Chimera had to look away. “You – you were protecting Koyomi.”

Technically, Chimera had been hunting dinner, but if Soma wanted to think otherwise, Chimera wasn’t going to stop him. “I did what needed to be done,” it said, and let Soma interpret it how he would.

Soma’s shivering grew more pronounced and his breath hitched. “Thank you,” he said, voice coming out strangled and thick and altogether wrong.

Chimera stepped forward slowly, following an impulse it didn’t quite understand, cupping Soma’s face in its borrowed hands. Soma stilled, eyes going wide. He made no move to pull away, even though Chimera gave him plenty of time as it leaned in to kiss him on his frozen mouth. Soma’s lips were soft, and Kosuke’s memories told him that this was a good thing. Chimera deepened the pressure, just slightly, and Soma’s lips opened slightly. Puzzled, Chimera pulled away.

“What?” Soma said, and even in the relative dark, Chimera could see that his pupils had expanded.

Chimera lowered its hands, reluctantly. What was left of Kosuke was giving it conflicting messages; on the one hand, Chimera wanted more, but on the other, what it had just done was fundamentally wrong. It tilted its head to the side, trying to make sense of it. “Nitoh Kosuke wanted that,” it said, finding its borrowed voice hoarse for no apparent reason. “And didn’t want to want it.”

“Nitoh was straight,” Soma said. “Or I would have…” He broke off, a choked little laugh bubbling out. “He’s really gone.”

“Yes,” Chimera said.

Soma folded in on himself, sinking to his knees, head bowed forward and hands limp on the ground in front of him. “How,” he said, and Chimera felt the dragon inside Soma surge forward. No Phantom wanted to be caged, regardless of how well Soma thought he got along with the monster in his soul. Chimera had been an oddity, as much for its cannibalistic predation on its own kind as for its willingness to forge a contract with a human; it could have eaten Kosuke at any point, but it had chosen not to. The dragon inside Soma was different; if Soma let his guard down far enough, the dragon would kill him and emerge.

Chimera crouched in front of Soma, not knowing what it wanted. It wanted something from Soma that it still didn’t understand; not mana, but something else, and if Soma let his dragon break open his soul, Chimera would never figure out what it was. Aside from which, Chimera rationalized, if the dragon broke free, Chimera could only eat it once. If it tried to keep Soma alive, he would produce mana as long as he lived, and Chimera could siphon it off.

“Soma Haruto,” Chimera said, and took Soma’s hands. The ring Soma was barely holding onto brushed against Chimera’s fingers, and the word _hope_ echoed in its ears. What was it that Soma said, over and over to the point of being obnoxious – ah, that was it. “You’re the last hope,” Chimera said, which got a reaction it wasn’t expecting at all.

Soma grabbed him, the ring falling unheeded to the ground. Chimera pocketed it unobtrusively as Soma stared at him wordlessly for several awkward and silent seconds, and then Soma’s mouth was crushed against Chimera’s. It felt different, when Chimera wasn’t the one initiating the contact, and when Soma seemed to know exactly what he wanted. Chimera felt Soma’s tongue, and – remembering what Soma had done before – obligingly parted its borrowed lips in a wash of entirely new sensation.

Kosuke had never done this, never felt the drive to touch a woman despite his outward actions and declaration, and had pushed away any desire he’d felt to touch a man. _Ah,_ thought Chimera distantly. _This is why he was so desperate for knowledge. To push this away._

Chimera had ended up on its back while it wasn’t paying attention, the starry sky above outlining Soma’s blurry and shadowed face, and Soma’s hand was creeping up the inside of Chimera’s shirt. Chimera’s borrowed skin burned under the touch, although Soma wasn’t giving off enough heat to harm. Chimera twitched, uncomfortable in a way that Kosuke’s memories told him had a very specific solution, and reached downward. Soma grabbed its wrist before Chimera could do more than simply touch the button on its pants.

“Not here,” Soma said, breath hot against Chimera’s lips. He sat up, still straddling Chimera’s hips, and scrubbed his hands through his hair so that it stood up in fluffy asymmetrical spikes. “Are you sure?” he said.

“Soma Haruto,” Chimera said, finding it unexpectedly difficult to keep its voice even, “if you do not give me what I want, I may eat you.”

Soma choked out another laugh, and reached through a portal. Chimera watched with interest, the discomfort in its groin fading slightly as Soma produced another ring. The second ring echoed the word _teleport_ , and Chimera stored it away as one it hadn’t seen before. The portal hovered in the air, and Soma clambered awkwardly to his feet. He extended a hand, and Chimera took it, allowing Soma to pull it upright before Soma pressed himself against Chimera again. The motion drove away Chimera’s curiosity about the new ring as Soma’s fingers tangled in Chimera’s hair and Soma kissed him again. Soma guided them through the portal, the already dim light fading away nearly entirely.

Chimera had a vague impression of a room, wooden beams half-covering pale walls over dark floors, furniture haphazardly placed and every surface covered with clutter. Soma pushed Chimera up against a wall, against something small and hard and sharp, and Chimera squirmed away. Electric light, yellow and warm, flooded the room and Soma blinked. “This wasn’t,” he said, and shuddered.

“No,” Chimera said, and took Soma by the hand. Stairs led upwards to a silent and empty corridor with lights evenly spaced, and Chimera led an unresisting Soma from door to door until one finally opened onto an innocuously unlived-in room. Cloth covers hid the furniture, and Chimera let go of Soma to yank at the one over the bed. Soma stopped the attempt.

“Leave it,” he said, and reached for Chimera’s pants. Chimera let him pull the inexplicably too-tight jeans downward, gaze traveling over a thoroughly unexpected development. The engorged dick not hanging but standing to attention between Chimera’s legs certainly explained the sudden poor fit of Kosuke’s jeans, Chimera thought, and then Soma was removing his own pants to reveal a similar state. Given how tight Soma’s pants were to begin with, Chimera was duly impressed that they hadn’t simply split open.

“Ah,” Chimera said. Soma pushed him back onto the bed. Chimera’s feet tangled in the denim still around his ankles, and he fell more heavily than he’d intended. Soma was on top of him in a matter of seconds, and the pants ceased to matter. One of Soma’s hands was on Chimera’s cock and the other was gripping Chimera’s hair and Soma’s mouth was on his and Chimera was lost in the new physical sensation, unable even to catalogue the responses of his human body.

Soma moaned against his mouth, a spike of hard and heavy pressure against Chimera’s thigh, and Chimera had the glimmer of a rational thought. He took one hand away from where it was clutching Soma’s waist and placed it on Soma’s cock. Soma moaned again, hips jerking, and Chimera smiled, moving his hand experimentally up and down. Soma’s reaction was almost more fascinating than Chimera’s own, but the idea that he was the one driving Soma to make those needy little sounds drove a jolt of pleasure through him and Chimera couldn’t stop himself from making noises of his own.

Chimera’s voice did something to Soma; he twitched and shuddered, Kosuke’s name spilling over his lips, something wet and hot and slippery spurting over Chimera’s hand. Soma collapsed against him, breathing hard, hand falling away from Chimera. Chimera was not pleased; whatever Soma had gotten, he wanted it. Before he could voice his displeasure, Soma stirred and kissed him lightly along the jaw and then the collarbone before traveling downwards.

“What are you –“ Chimera started to ask, but his voice broke off in an undignified groan of sheer bliss as Soma’s mouth enveloped his cock. Its wet heat felt so far beyond the sensation of Soma’s hand that Chimera felt his hips moving without his permission. Soma’s tongue flicked against the tip of Chimera’s cock, and Chimera’s vision fizzled out. His hands had somehow gotten fisted in Soma’s hair, and Soma seemed to take that as encouragement.

It didn’t take long for the pleasure to build toward something Chimera desperately wanted, finally cresting in a wave that rushed through his entire body and left him limp and sated. Soma pulled away, licking his lips and then wiping his mouth with one hand before curling around Chimera. His skin was sticky, but the little aftershocks of satisfaction made it very hard to care. Chimera nuzzled at Soma’s hair, also somewhat sticky, and yawned.

Did Kosuke’s body need to sleep, Chimera wondered distantly. He felt as though he could, Soma a warm bulwark in his arms against the cool air against his legs. He couldn’t tell what Soma was doing, other than holding on to him like a lifetime, but then Soma’s breath hitched in his throat again and Chimera felt dampness spreading across his shirt.

“Soma Haruto?” he asked.

Soma didn’t answer in so many words, just held on more tightly. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.”

Chimera blinked. “You don’t need to apologize for what just happened,” he said, but Soma was pulling away from him and clearing the moisture away from his eyes.

“We should,” he said, and looked down at himself. His shirt was spattered with a pale jelly-like goo, the same that was on Chimera’s hands and Kosuke’s jacket. Soma pulled his shirt off and reached for his pants before feeling his hair with an expression of resignation. “Let me have the jacket,” he said, voice subdued. Chimera gave it to him, confused and hurt and not sure where the feelings were coming from. “Your shirt looks okay,” Soma said, and he left with the pile of soiled clothing.

Chimera went to follow, drawn up short by the jeans still tangled around his ankles, and then he froze. When had he started thinking of himself as _he_ , it wondered, and pulled the pants up around its borrowed waist. At some point it had started thinking of Kosuke’s body as his, and Chimera could trace that to the moment Soma had started deliberately generating physical sensations. Chimera narrowed its borrowed eyes and looked toward the door.

It couldn’t deny the satisfaction, though, entirely different from a plethora of mana, which made it a dangerous sensation. No wonder Kosuke had avoided it, Chimera thought. It would be distracting if he let it, the drive to give and receive physical satiation, leading to nothing more than time lost. With stiff, jerky motions, Chimera fastened its pants and went looking for either transportation or an exit.


	2. RUN

There was a washing machine on the first floor, and Haruto dumped his entire load of clothing into it and started it on autopilot. Not thinking took him to the shower, also on the first floor. Each movement was careful and deliberate, taking up all of the attention he had, from turning on the water – he couldn’t figure out how to turn on the heater, so the water was freezing cold and stayed that way, but that was all right – to the slippery sensation of soap to the second stream of liquid ice. He was shivering by the time he was clean and dry, and reached for his pants before remembering he’d stuffed them into the washing machine along with everything else.

“Dammit,” he cursed under his breath. The belt was on top of the washing machine, along with Connect. It took him two tries to get the ring on his finger, but the portal opened readily enough and gave him access to his closet. He’d closed the portal and put the pants on before it occurred to him that he also needed a shirt, particularly since the washer cycle was significantly less than halfway through and there was no dryer. “Of course there isn’t,” he said, and scanned Connect again.

 _Error_ , said the belt.

Haruto buried his face in his hands and felt he should have seen the end of his mana coming. It wasn’t like he’d had much in the way of reserves after the Sabbath. He mentally shied away from the fight itself, but the aftermath played out behind his eyes in stark unforgiving color. Koyomi, telling him to let her go. He’d taken her home, at her request – not here, not to the house where she’d grown up, not to the house she didn’t remember, but to the antique shop where she’d had a new life. He’d taken her to where she’d been happy, surrounded by friends.

He hadn’t just let her go – there was no way he could, not Koyomi, not his closest friend and the only other person who knew what the first Sabbath had been like. She was the only person who truly knew him at all, and he couldn’t let her die. Koyomi had pitched Please across the room, though, when he’d tried to infuse her with mana again, her stubborn determination coming to the forefront at exactly the wrong time. Haruto had had to watch her slowly fade, telling him the entire time that it was _for the best_ , each word more painful than the last until there were no more words.

Koyomi hadn’t even left a body to bury; the construct that had housed her essence had dissipated into a shimmering cloud, as so many magical constructs did, fading to leave the essence of her soul in the Philosopher’s Stone. Haruto had picked it up, and it had done something he’d never seen before – it had transmuted under his touch to a ring, without any further outside manipulation. It had whispered _hope_ to him, in Koyomi’s voice, and it was the only reason he hadn’t broken down completely then and there.

Gremlin had, for once, not picked the absolute worst time to interfere; if he’d shown up to steal the Philosopher’s Stone while Koyomi was still breathing, Haruto would have murdered him in cold blood, human face or no. As it was, Haruto had seen the welcome surprise of Nitoh – still acting odd, the way he had after disrupting the Sabbath, but unmistakably Nitoh – lurking outside the antique shop and deflecting Gremlin’s assault.

“What did you do,” Haruto muttered into his hands. “Nitoh, what did you do.” He couldn’t use Nitoh’s nickname, not when he was already scraped raw.

“I told you, Nitoh isn’t here,” came Nitoh’s voice, and Haruto flinched. His vision wavered and he stumbled sideways into the washing machine before the world righted itself, and he saw Chimera wearing Nitoh’s face standing just outside the door. “He set me free,” Chimera said. “And I let his soul go.”

Haruto took a step toward the monster that had murdered his friend, the monster that he’d slept with barely an hour after Koyomi had died, not knowing exactly what he wanted to say but knowing that it couldn’t just stand there looking at him as if everything were perfectly normal, and woke up staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. He blinked at it, and got the sun full in his eyes when he turned his head in an attempt to figure out where he was.

“Your shirt is dry,” said Chimera from somewhere behind him. The Phantom wearing Nitoh’s skin was fully dressed again, sprawled out over a chair and giving Haruto an extremely bored look when Haruto finally figured out which way was up and got his feet planted firmly on the ground. He hadn’t bothered to replicate Nitoh’s careful hairstyle, the one consistent piece of grooming Nitoh never let go regardless of where he’d been sleeping. The disheveled mess Chimera had just pushed away from his eyes only served to drive home that Nitoh was gone. “I said,” Chimera repeated, “your shirt is dry.”

“What?” Haruto couldn’t quite parse the words at first, until Chimera extended a hand with something in it and shook it impatiently. Haruto took the shirt, stiff from drying over something that clearly hadn’t been a clothesline and smelling of the outdoors. He looked down to see that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and remembered that he’d tried to pull a new one through a portal.

“Put it on,” Chimera said impatiently, still staring at him.

Haruto did, feeling better with the warmth against his skin. Chimera held out his jacket, and Haruto put that on, too, only realizing how cold he had been when he was starting to warm up. His teeth chattered, belatedly, and he clenched his jaw to make it stop. “Why,” he said, his voice breaking halfway through the syllable. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Why are you still here?”

“I like the jacket,” Chimera said, stroking the garment in question and still staring at Haruto without blinking. “It was wet. I had to wait for it to dry.”

“Yes, but.” Haruto rubbed his eyes; they felt grainy and dry, and he was thirsty. How he could feel physical discomfort when his entire world had fallen apart, he didn’t know. Koyomi, and Nitoh, and what he’d done with Chimera, and – he’d vanished without telling anyone where he was going. Haruto reached for his cell phone, finding it in his jacket pocket, and he’d ruined it by putting it through the wash. It wouldn’t turn on. He put it carefully back in his pocket, because it was always possible that something could be salvaged, instead of pitching it at the nearest wall.

“This keeps making noise,” Chimera said, holding up Nitoh’s cell phone. As Haruto watched, the phone powered itself down. Chimera looked at it, shaking it slightly and frowning. “Oh.”

“I have to go.” Haruto stood, searching for Teleport. He couldn’t handle Chimera staring at him from Nitoh’s eyes, not right now. Chimera was a problem that was going to have to be handled, but Haruto didn’t think he could do it. He also didn’t think Chimera posed a threat to the general population, to be fair, but if it came down to it, Mayu could probably do something. Teleport slid onto his finger, and Haruto remembered something else before he opened a portal.

The hope ring was missing. It wasn’t in any of his pockets, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had it. He thought he’d had it when Gremlin had shown up, but he didn’t know if he’d brought it with him when he’d dragged Chimera to the stone circle in search of whatever had happened to Nitoh. Haruto squeezed his eyes closed and tried to breathe. He wasn’t going to panic. He could retrace his steps and find Hope. He hadn’t lost Koyomi’s soul, just misplaced it, which was no improvement.

“Are you looking for this?”

Haruto’s eyes popped open. Chimera held out the hope ring, safe and intact, on one outstretched palm. Haruto snatched it away, feeling Koyomi’s essence untouched within the ring. Chimera had done nothing to it, other than pick it up and keep it from getting lost. “Thank you,” he whispered. The edges of Hope bit into his palm deep enough to hurt.

Chimera tilted his head to the side, hair falling in his eyes. He brushed it aside impatiently. “It’s important to you,” he said, voice inflected upwards at the end as if he weren’t sure whether or not he wanted to ask a question.

“I don’t know what you want,” Haruto said suddenly.

Chimera regarded him, blinking slowly enough that Haruto thought he was closing his eyes before he focused his gaze directly into Haruto’s. It felt invasive, as though Chimera were looking past Haruto’s eyes and directly into his Underworld. “I need your help,” Chimera said, the words coming hesitantly. No, not hesitant – Chimera was reluctant, not wanting to admit to insufficiency.

“My help,” Haruto repeated.

“I’m.” Chimera grimaced, the expression looking odd on Nitoh’s face. “I’m trapped,” he said, gesturing at his body. “Can’t get out.”

“Is that why you – “ Haruto stopped himself from using the word _murder_ to describe what Chimera had done. “Is that why you let Nitoh go?”

“I couldn’t leave his Underworld while he was still there,” Chimera said, in the tone of someone explaining something perfectly obvious to a not particularly bright student. “But now.” He wrinkled his nose and gestured again. “This.”

It wasn’t possible. Phantoms didn’t get stuck in their human progenitors; they broke free and the person died, or the person forced them into the subconscious and gained the right to learn how to use magic. Haruto shook his head slowly. “That’s not how it works,” he said helplessly.

“Do you want to see?” Chimera went limp, body draping almost obscenely now over the chair in which he’d been sitting. He wasn’t breathing, and the color drained out of his face.

“Chimera?” Haruto was across the room before he could blink. He’d almost used Nitoh’s name, seeing his body abruptly appear to die.

 _Do you hear me_? came Chimera’s voice, faintly. He didn’t sound like Nitoh, but like the Phantom Nitoh had occasionally called forth into the real world to help in a fight. Haruto, kneeling at Nitoh’s side, closed his eyes and listened.

“I hear you,” he said.

_Do you see me?_

Haruto opened his eyes again, feeling foolish, and looked. There was a shimmer, in the corner, that took on the shape of the Phantom Chimera as he stared. It was still faint, still translucent, but recognizable. Chimera yawned, displaying pointed teeth, and crouched down until it was face to face with him.

 _Do you see?_ Chimera said again, and Haruto could see the tangle around its feet linking it to Nitoh’s body. Chimera flexed and the threads tightened, weaving themselves further around the Phantom.

“What is it?” Haruto had never seen anything like it; twice in two days, now, he’d come across something new embedded in the death of a friend.

Chimera melted back into Nitoh, color returning to his face as he took a shuddering breath. “Don’t know,” he said. “Help me get rid of it.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” Haruto muttered. Chimera did not seem to be impressed, simply watching Haruto as he stretched out each of his limbs one by one.

“I am perfectly willing to solve this problem on my own, Soma Haruto,” Chimera said with a glint in its eye that said that Haruto would not like whatever solution Chimera found. “But your company is not unpleasant.”

Everything Haruto had wanted to say to Nitoh, everything he hadn’t said because Nitoh was too aggressively straight or too rigidly adherent to social expectation, every word that had tumbled through his mind when Chimera had kissed him and whispered that _Kosuke wanted that_ came rushing to the forefront of his mind with a vengeance. “Is – is he…” Haruto started to ask.

Chimera straightened, moving slowly and deliberately until he was sitting entirely upright. “I believe our friend is at peace, Soma Haruto,” he said, each word sounding carefully chosen. “But if you do not wish to help me, I will not presume upon you any further.”

“I’ll help,” Haruto said, half unintentionally. He couldn’t do anything more for Nitoh, couldn’t thank him for what he’d done in disrupting the Sabbath and saving the lives of countless people at the cost of his own, but he could help Chimera in Nitoh’s name. He could try not to see Chimera as a monster who had murdered his friend, and instead see someone trapped and lost. “I’ll help,” he said again, more firmly.

Chimera smiled, teeth looking somehow more pointed than Haruto remembered.

“I don’t.” Haruto paced across the room and back. “I don’t know how,” he said. “I don’t know how, yet, and before I do anything else, I have to lay Koyomi to rest.” He hadn’t intended to say that, about Koyomi, but the idea had been growing since Hope had formed in his hands.

Chimera shrugged, apparently satisfied now that he knew he had Haruto’s cooperation. “Kosuke was fond of Koyomi, too,” he said.

Haruto blinked against the sudden tears, but one escaped anyway. He tried to brush it away before Chimera saw. “He was,” he said. “Everyone was.”

Chimera stretched his spine, coming up onto his feet in one graceful motion. He was moving more easily than he had the day before, with more certainty and coordination. Haruto wondered in the back of his mind whether that was because Chimera was getting more used to a human body or whether that body was binding him more tightly over time, and dismissed the question. Even if it was a matter of time, Koyomi came first.

“We’re – I’m going home,” he said. “You’re coming with.”

“I have no contract with you,” Chimera said, flashing pointed teeth again. “Certainly not one that includes instruction.”

Haruto lost his tentative grasp on his emotions, and frustration that hadn’t seemed important a few seconds earlier bubbled over. “If you want my help, you’re going to follow my directions,” he said.

“Complete obedience?” Chimera raised one eyebrow. “This is the term of our agreement?”

“What? No.” Haruto did not want to strangle Chimera. He was not volatile. He was perfectly calm. Everything was fine. “If I tell you not to do something, you don’t do it. If I tell you we’re going somewhere, we go. In return, I help you, and I won’t tell you to do something that will put you in danger or cause you undue distress.”

“Agreed,” Chimera said, with a note of finality, and held out a hand. Haruto took it, feeling a tingle of mana, and wondered exactly what kind of contract he’d just apparently signed and sealed.

“We’re going home,” Haruto said, sliding Teleport back onto his hand.

“Yes,” said Chimera, and paced across the room to stand at his shoulder. Up close, Haruto could feel the Phantom, unleavened by human presence. A wizard might feel a little different than a non-magic-user, and Haruto couldn’t feel anything different from an immature Gate at all, but Chimera gave off a distinctly inhuman aura. It was both intriguing and unsettling.

Haruto rolled his shoulders back and opened a portal to the antique shop. Given the deluge of noise when he stepped through it, followed by Chimera, he thought Shunpei had slept there; it turned out that it was late afternoon, not morning, and he spent an inordinately long time explaining to Wajima and Shunpei both that he was perfectly fine. Neither of them were happy about Chimera, either, and then Mayu walked in the door.

“No,” she said.

“I – what?” Haruto, trying to convince Wajima that nothing was wrong, except that everything was wrong, had his entire train of thought derailed.

“What _happened_?” Mayu circled Chimera, looking at him with equal measures of horror and fascination. Haruto dimly remembered some of his high school classmates looking at pinned insects with the same expression, and he felt defensive on Chimera’s behalf. Chimera shouldn’t be seen as a specimen, as something less than human, although Chimera _wasn’t_ human, didn’t have a human heart. It was oddly hard to remember that Chimera was a Phantom.

“I saw you,” Chimera said to Mayu, apparently just as unimpressed with her scrutiny as Haruto.

“Yeah, but that was – how did this even happen to you?”

Chimera turned to Haruto. “She sees more clearly than you do,” he said. “Perhaps it is her assistance that I require.”

“I seem to remember a contract,” Haruto said before he thought about how Mayu might be the better person to handle Chimera. Mayu hadn’t had an unrequited crush on Nitoh Kosuke, as far as he knew. Mayu’s judgment wouldn’t be clouded by unresolved emotions. Mayu hadn’t lost her closest friend – but, Haruto remembered, she had lost her twin sister.

“So we do,” Chimera said, appearing oblivious to Haruto’s internal conflict. If he caught on to any of it, he didn’t show it, fading rather neatly into the background and leaving Haruto to field questions on his own.

Actually attempting to leave the following morning sparked a whole new round of argument when Chimera flatly refused to ride on the back of Haruto’s bike. If Haruto wanted to be fair about it, Chimera and Haruto’s travel bag didn’t fit particularly well, not to mention the assorted odds and ends of Nitoh’s belongings that Chimera had decided were to travel with him.

Haruto did not want to be fair about it.

That the majority of the day was wasted in finding and then acquiring what Chimera considered to be an acceptable vehicle nearly drove Haruto into leaving on his own, no matter that he’d reminded Chimera about their alleged contract. Inexplicably, it wasn’t money that was the sticking point. Chimera produced a not insubstantial stack of bills from somewhere, and Haruto didn’t want to know if Nitoh had had weirder priorities than he’d thought to begin with or if Chimera had done something potentially shady. Either way, Chimera could have just bought a motorcycle, but he’d decided to be picky about it, and only Haruto’s sense of responsibility kept him from leaving Chimera to deal with Mayu anyway, contract or no contract.

When he finally made a selection, the vehicle Chimera chose wasn’t technically operational. Getting it to a state Haruto considered satisfactory – which was to say, running – took the following morning, but Chimera wasn’t happy with it until he’d done something else. And then another something else. By the time Chimera had tweaked the bike to his liking, it had been two full days and Haruto was beyond ready to just leave without him. The sympathetic expressions he kept getting from everyone he knew made his skin crawl.

“What are you even doing?” Haruto asked on the second afternoon, sitting on the ground with his back to a wall and watching Chimera perform arcane and mysterious manipulations to the guts of the bike.

Chimera didn’t answer until he’d finished doing whatever it was he was doing. He wiped his hands on a rag that had been used often enough that Haruto didn’t think it was taking any of the grease off Chimera’s skin at all. “Do you want me to show you?” he asked, dropping the rag.

“Not really.” Haruto let his head thump against the wall. The sky was washed out, halfway between overcast and clear. It fit his mood perfectly.

Chimera grinned unsettlingly, which Haruto could barely see at the edges of his vision, and went back to work. He kept up a running commentary, explaining what he was doing and why, until Haruto abruptly got up and left. He didn’t need to know more than the absolute basics of how the bike worked; if something went wrong, he could always teleport it to a mechanic. His route was interrupted by Chimera manifesting in front of him, expression serious.

“Soma Haruto,” he said, and then seemed to be at a loss for words.

“Please tell me you’ll be finished by tomorrow,” Haruto said. He’d given up on leaving before it got dark, not that he’d really picked a direction to go.

“Tomorrow,” Chimera said, and then leaned over to kiss him.

Haruto let him, at first, and then found one hand tangled in Chimera’s t-shirt and the other pulling Chimera closer. He didn’t want to let go, when Chimera stepped back, but he uncurled his fingers.

“Tomorrow,” Chimera said again, and went back to the bike, leaving Haruto to wonder what, exactly, had just happened.

Haruto left most of his rings stored in the box the violet golem had thoughtfully made; he could always collect what he needed with Connect. Hope remained stored safely in his pocket; Chimera had given it a look Haruto couldn’t read when he’d worn it, and Haruto had felt more comfortable with it out of sight. Chimera hadn’t seemed to pay attention when Haruto had put it away, but something about his body language was a little too attentive for Haruto’s peace of mind.

The bundle on the back of Chimera’s bike had grown while Haruto wasn’t watching; it had acquired Nitoh’s tent at some point, and the formerly mostly-empty duffel bag was full. It sat securely on the bike, which had also gone from dull and somewhat battered to clean, shiny, and still somewhat battered. It fit Nitoh perfectly; as long as Haruto couldn’t see Chimera’s expression below the half-messy hair he still refused to style, he could almost believe that it was Nitoh after all. Chimera looked over his shoulder and ruined the illusion.

“Are you ready?” he said, having the nerve sound impatient.

“I’ve been ready for two days,” Haruto muttered. He started the bike and took it out of town. He could hear Chimera’s engine over his own, a distinct growling sound that wasn’t unlike Chimera’s Phantom voice. Haruto wondered if he’d done that on purpose, and then wondered if he’d wasted an afternoon just so Chimera could get the engine to make a specific sound. He decided that he wasn’t going to think about it.

Haruto went west, first, dodging traffic out of the city and finding no fewer cars out on the highway. He switched to back roads, not knowing them well at all but trying to go in the same general direction. He had a vague idea of laying Koyomi to rest along the western coast of Honshu, with the sound of the ocean against the setting sun. He also had the vague idea that the act of driving cross-country would be quieting, if not precisely soothing; he’d always felt at peace with the road unspooling beneath his tires.

The relative silence of the road only served to put him farther into his own head, despite knowing he should be more attentive to his immediate environment. There were several near-misses before traffic thinned out, and Haruto felt they’d been going long enough to stop for a few minutes. He pulled the bike off the road, hearing Chimera do the same, and put down the kickstand.

“Your driving is reckless,” Chimera said neutrally. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, which was going to get them in trouble.

“You’re driving illegally,” Haruto retorted. The engine modifications were bad enough, being technically illegal as they were, but he didn’t think they’d be noticed. The bike wasn’t specifically louder than it had been, just different-sounding.

“Nitoh Kosuke has a license,” Chimera returned, sounding smug. Haruto thrust Connect onto his finger and pulled his spare helmet off the top shelf of his closet, shoving it into Chimera’s chest.

“No,” he said. “You’re going to get us pulled over and in trouble. Wear it.”

Chimera looked at the helmet dubiously, and then back at Haruto. “Is this an instruction?” he said.

“Yes.” Haruto didn’t know what Chimera meant and didn’t care. “Since you can’t legally ride the bike without one, yes. Yes, yes, yes.”

Chimera took the helmet, conveying distaste in every line of his body, and fastened it to the top of his duffel bag. Haruto sighed and went to fill his gas tank. Chimera mimicked him again, down to putting on the helmet when it was time to leave. Traffic dropped off further as the roads wound deeper into the mountains, and by the time Haruto decided it was time to stop for the night, they were the only vehicles on the road.  It was also possible that they were entirely lost; Haruto had no idea where they were relative to anything else.

They must have been relatively close to a major road, or at least close enough to easily reach said major road; Haruto found their back road approaching a small hotel from behind. It looked as though it didn’t see much business, an impression borne out by the teenager at the desk and the dusty condition of the room. It wasn’t expensive, and it had indoor plumbing, and that was the extent of what Haruto wanted out of it.

“Soma Haruto,” said Chimera, when Haruto had kicked off his shoes at the entrance of the room and stood there not really looking at the small space. It was a traditional room, futons rolled up in the corner and mats covering the floor. A low table sat against one wall.

“Mm?” Haruto moved away from the entrance and sat cross-legged on the tatami. There was one window, covered in paper screens. He left the screens closed.

“I require mana.” Chimera’s contract with Nitoh had involved mana, which hadn’t occurred to Haruto at any point over the past several days. Nitoh, if he remembered correctly, had fed Chimera once or twice a week with Phantoms and Ghouls, but there weren’t any running around.

“How did you get mana before you were sealed?” Haruto asked, sidestepping the question Chimera hadn’t technically asked. He stretched out onto his back, feeling the distinct texture of tatami through his shirt. It had been a long time since he’d been in a traditional room.

Chimera flashed his teeth at Haruto. “The environment was different,” he said.

Haruto decided he didn’t want to know. “I’ll figure something out,” he said. If it came down to it, he knew he could feed Chimera through the Please ring; he’d done it when Nitoh’s belt had been stolen, although Chimera, by all accounts, preferred to find his own food.

“There is a Gate nearby,” Chimera said.

Haruto sat up. “You can’t hunt a Gate,” he said. “Creating a Phantom kills the Gate.”

“I know that,” Chimera said. “I have no plans to end a human life.”

“Good.” Haruto lay back again. The ceiling was stained with what might have been water damage. “That’s not something that’s acceptable. Ever.”

Chimera might have sighed, but he didn’t argue. “Do you not need to eat, Soma Haruto?”

“Not hungry,” Haruto said, which was mostly true. That trying to find something resembling dinner was more trouble than it was worth was the rest of the truth. “I’m going to go take a bath,” he said.

Chimera wasn’t in the room when Haruto got back, although he’d spread the futons out along the two unoccupied walls. Haruto blinked at them for a moment and shook his head. Part of him felt that he should be curious about where Chimera had gone, and whether he was off hunting the Gate that he claimed was nearby, although Haruto had no idea how Chimera could possibly know. The rest of him felt that Chimera, once having given his word, wasn’t likely to break it.

The door opened again before Haruto had much time to dredge up the will to argue himself into going to look for Chimera in any case. Chimera pitched something in Haruto’s general direction, and he caught it reflexively. It turned out to be a rice ball, wrapped in seaweed and then again in plastic. “Thanks,” Haruto said. Chimera shrugged in response and started digging through his bag. Haruto left him to it.

The rice ball wasn’t anything special, but Haruto wouldn’t have cared much even if it had been. The taste of mayonnaise in the center caught him by surprise; seeing Nitoh’s face and body without his ever-present container of mayonnaise was suddenly jarring. Chimera caught him at it, his brows lowering in clear displeasure.

“Why do you care?” Haruto snapped, putting the rice ball on the table.

“You can’t help me if you don’t keep yourself functioning,” Chimera said calmly.

Haruto opened his mouth to tell Chimera exactly what he thought of his interference and then closed it again; it wasn’t worth the argument. He finished the rice ball, although it tasted like dust, and then lay down on the futon under the window with Hope in one hand. He ran his fingers over the surface of the ring, the ridges and lines familiar enough that he didn’t need to see it. His moment of not-quite-introspection was interrupted by Chimera flopping down beside him in a very Nitoh-like gesture. Chimera’s next move wasn’t like Nitoh at all, no matter what Chimera might have said about what Nitoh had wanted; he leaned over to kiss Haruto on the mouth.

“Chimera,” Haruto said. Chimera ignored him and slipped a hand under the waistband of Haruto’s loose sleeping pants. “Chimera,” Haruto said again, taking Chimera’s wrist before he’d gotten more than a fingertip brushed across his clear target.

Chimera looked at him, unblinking, dark eyes utterly inscrutable. “Soma Haruto,” he said, voice steady and without inflection. Haruto had the impression nonetheless that Chimera was asking a question, but he wasn’t entirely sure what it was. He let go of Chimera’s wrist, choosing not to think about what it implied about him, that he was willing to sleep with the monster that had killed his friend just because it wore his friend’s face.

He’d expected nightmares, afterwards, but instead he slept heavily and without dreams, and woke with nothing resolved and nothing expiated.

Searching the beaches and mountains took on a kind of rhythm, in which Haruto chose his direction based on his own internal prompting, but no physical location was right to hold Koyomi’s soul. He kept Hope in his pocket, never on his hand, sometimes bringing it out if he thought he might have found somewhere Koyomi would like to sleep through the rest of time. Chimera watched with interest at first; interest slowly turned to boredom, and boredom slowly turned to frustration as a few days lengthened into a week, and then weeks, and then months, and Haruto still hadn’t found anywhere that made the restlessness fade.

Some places had too many people, others were too lonely, or too quiet, or too bright, too loud, too full of the marks of humanity and empty of humanity’s saving graces. In Ishikawa, Haruto discovered a pack of rogue Ghouls hiding with no direction or purpose; the Gate that might have made a Phantom to direct them had died before he could fall into despair, and whoever had tried to build an army far from Tokyo had just left the situation in limbo.

Haruto dispatched the Ghouls, with Chimera’s enthusiastic help, and Chimera looked satisfied for the first time in days. He slept next to Haruto that night, or at least lay close enough to share body heat in the bitter cold. Haruto wasn’t sure that Chimera actually slept; if he did, it was less than Haruto himself.

Fukui brought brightly colored autumn leaves and rain, and Chimera flatly refused to ride in the wet. He insisted that Haruto study his link to Nitoh’s body again, but Haruto was reluctant to look so closely. In Tottori, Haruto discovered that the more regularly he slept with Chimera, the less impatient Chimera was; being able to sleep without nightmares afterwards was just another reason to do something they clearly both wanted. By the time they had reached the westernmost tip of Shimane, however, Chimera was again beginning to throw sideways looks at Haruto no matter what kind of distraction Haruto tried to use.

December sunlight eased Chimera’s overt frustration a little, and Haruto turned their route inland for the first time since reaching the coast to begin with. He regretted it before they’d spent more than a few days in Hiroshima, with its heavy air of history and reminders of what had gone before. Haruto avoided the city entirely, but the prefecture bore its name with the long memory of the wronged, and that was no place for Koyomi.

Hiroshima’s southern coastline faced Shikoku, and Haruto sat for a long time on a dirt road overlooking the ocean. The sky glittered, hard and pale blue with the sun high overhead, and the waves broke feebly over the dark sand. There was no wind, but Haruto pulled his jacket around himself anyway. He felt no internal pull one way or the other, the tug he’d thought he’d felt bringing him this far gone entirely.

“What are you doing?” Chimera asked, after Haruto had been listening to the surf without moving for what felt like hours. It might have been.

Unaccountably frustrated at the interruption, even though he hadn’t had a purpose in mind, Haruto snapped, “The same thing I’ve been doing.”

Chimera gave him the same unreadable look that he’d been wearing almost constantly, the one that Haruto was beginning to interpret as doubt that Haruto had any sort of purpose at all or the ability to accomplish it even if he did. Doubt that Haruto was ready to let Koyomi go, and was dragging Chimera around the country on a fool’s errand with no end in sight. Doubt that Haruto would fulfill his part of the vague contract they’d made and signed, and Haruto suddenly felt incredibly tired.

“I’m…” he said, and fell silent.

“I will continue to be patient,” Chimera said, but there was an edge to his voice that said that his patience had its limits and that Haruto was approaching them. “Nitoh Kosuke respected you.”

What Chimera did not say but what Haruto heard was that Chimera found him lacking, and that the only reason Chimera was still following him around at all instead of returning to Tokyo and Mayu and an actually competent wizard was because of Nitoh’s regard for Haruto. He tightened his grip on Hope in his pocket, but for the first time, the faint hum of Koyomi’s soul failed to be any sort of comfort. Haruto withdrew his hand, looking away from the suddenly too-bright sunlight, and turned the bike inland.

“We’re not going to cross the water,” he said, voice rough, and headed west.

For all the impatience Chimera might have shown, he still made no move to actively resist or move against Haruto’s vague course of action, until they reached Yamaguchi. Even then, Chimera at first only regarded the remote and rural area with a sort of disdain, until Haruto first saw the butterflies.


	3. Pied Piper

Chimera wasn’t sure if it was getting used to being more or less human or if it had discovered heretofore unsuspected and vast stores of patience, but as long as Soma continued to supply it with mana, it was more or less content to follow him along his winding path to nowhere. The days turned into weeks, however, and then months, and Chimera began to doubt that Soma intended to completely fulfill his end of the bargain. The clear solution was to simply drain him of mana entirely and move on to the next wizard, but Chimera found itself unable to follow through.

“I blame you for this, Nitoh Kosuke,” it said one evening, watching Soma sleeping off Chimera’s latest mana extraction. It would be so easy to simply reach over, while Soma was completely unaware of anything at all, and yet Chimera couldn’t do it. Even with the sense of Kosuke inside its borrowed skin all but gone, some impressions held fast. Kosuke’s affection for Soma was the strongest of those, and Chimera found itself stroking Soma’s hair instead of draining him dry.

Appreciation for aesthetics of objects visible through human eyes was another holdover; once in a while, Chimera thought it could almost hear Kosuke’s voice exclaiming at what it could see. The ocean had the effect more often than anything else, although Chimera had never been particularly drawn to the water. The pounding of the waves against the shore was a rhythm that was somehow energizing and soothing at the same time; when Chimera finally figured out that the sound was reminiscent of a human heartbeat, it felt that it should have recognized the similarity far sooner. Even knowing the source of the emotional association didn’t stop the sound from having the same effects, though, and Chimera spent more time than it would willingly admit just listening.

Soma ran up against the boundaries of what Chimera considered acceptable, though, edging over them and then slipping off into the distance on the day that he apparently decided that the most appropriate course of action was to watch the eastern seaboard without moving for far longer than Chimera had thought a human body would tolerate. If it didn’t move, it got restless and sore. Soma, however, hadn’t so much as twitched while the sun slowly tracked its path overhead. That was the first day Chimera openly expressed its doubt and frustration, which had the effect of a brief increase in Soma’s determination.

The sense of purpose Soma radiated started slipping away almost immediately after Chimera had made a note of the effectiveness of direct communication, and Chimera had to amend its internal notes to something along the lines of _Soma is going to do whatever he wants anyway_. Still, Chimera was exploring the human experience, and as much as it didn’t want to be exploring said experience forever, it was beginning to find value in the knowledge it was accumulating. It was therefore not quite ready to write Soma off as a loss.

Chimera had to revise all of its assumptions, however, when Soma started following the butterflies.

The first sighting was after they had crossed yet another prefectural border, an unassuming line in the middle of nowhere, much like everywhere else they’d gone, surrounded by trees and mountains and not much else. Soma had pulled the bikes off the road at what might have been a park and might just have been a coincidental flat area next to the road with some conveniently placed rocks. Chimera had gone wandering through the trees in the late afternoon sunlight, watching the light filter through the needles and breathing in the crisp scent. He’d returned to find the bikes both parked near the road and no Soma.

“Soma Haruto!” Chimera called.

The wind rushing through the cedar trees was no kind of answer, sounding like a long drawn-out sigh. Chimera rolled its borrowed eyes and prowled around the bikes to see if there was any indication of where Soma had gone. There was none. It called out again, receiving the same kind of non-answer, but on its second walk-through of the small area, something glinting on the ground caught its eye.

“What?” Chimera bent over to pick up the ignition key for Soma’s bike, lying discarded in the beaten-down grass. “Careless even for you,” it said, but it had a general direction now, and walked a few steps farther.

Soma was standing all but hidden behind an outcropping of the same stone that littered the possible rest area, feet nearly hanging off the edge of a six-meter drop-off. He was looking intently at something. Chimera leaned over to see a dry streambed winding along the forest floor and more of the same trees that they’d been driving through for months; nothing in the scenery that seemed worthy of the attention Soma was apparently lavishing on it.

“Soma Haruto,” Chimera said again, and Soma turned slowly toward him.

“It’s gone,” he said sadly.

“What?” Chimera felt strongly that its vocabulary had been sorely restricted, and it wasn’t pleased.

“Didn’t you see the butterfly?” Soma said, and Chimera sighed. It hadn’t noticed any showy insects, but to be fair, small non-furred examples of local fauna hadn’t been anything that had been considered worth noting before.

“No,” it said, and had to steady Soma as Soma appeared to notice how close to the edge he was standing. “Perhaps you should pay more attention to your feet and less to flying pests, Soma Haruto.”

“It was beautiful,” Soma said softly, and that was the last Chimera heard about butterflies for that particular evening.

Chimera had nearly forgotten about the insect by the time it found Soma staring at nothing again two days later. This time the sun shone brightly down from almost directly overhead, and Soma had chosen a fairly busy road. The tanks on both bikes had just been filled, and Soma was almost smiling after carrying on a short conversation with a pair of strangers about nothing particularly important when he froze. Chimera looked around for the threat, even though Soma’s body language didn’t specifically say _danger_ , but there was nothing. It looked back to find Soma holding out a hand with the index finger carefully extended.

As Chimera watched, Soma pulled his hand back slowly and turned it back and forth. He’d never done that before; Chimera looked around again for something else out of the ordinary, but the only unusual thing was Soma staring at his own hand with an expression of wonder.

“Look,” Soma said, glancing up at Chimera with a smile. It was light and open, free of the invisible weight that had been dragging at Soma since they’d set out. It was completely unnatural, and it set Chimera’s borrowed teeth on edge.

“At what?” Chimera said harshly, and Soma’s face fell.

“Ah,” he said, eyes tracking something vanishing into the distance that still wasn’t there as far as Chimera could tell. “It’s gone again.”

“You’re supposed to be fulfilling your obligations,” Chimera said. “To the living and the dead.”

Soma’s lips thinned and he pulled his helmet on with jerky motions, not waiting to see if Chimera was following before he started his bike and pulled out into the steady stream of traffic. Chimera was more than adept at handling his own machine at this point, and caught up without difficulty. Soma’s recalcitrance and resentment at having his dereliction of duty pointed out chafed, though, and Chimera declined to speak to Soma for the remainder of the day. Given that Soma wasn’t speaking to him either, it was both more and less awkward than Chimera had expected. It told itself that it didn’t care.

The third time Soma mentioned the butterfly was when Chimera truly felt that the situation had gotten out of control.

Dusk and true dark fell earlier in the mountains than in the space around Tokyo, and more than once Chimera had found itself following Soma down pitch black roads lit only by their headlights and a dim impression of stars overhead before they found somewhere to sleep if they were lucky, and pitched Kosuke’s tent if not. Chimera had resigned itself to the tent, which wasn’t in and of itself unpleasant; it was that pitching the tent meant a lack of access to running water. Chimera had found an entirely new appreciation for running water in the months since it had found itself the sole occupant of Kosuke’s body.

Chimera was glad, at first, when Soma pulled his bike off the paved road they had been following onto what looked like a dirt track going precisely nowhere; it assumed that Soma knew where he was going, and that there would be somewhere to stop at the end of it. Several minutes of following a trail that wasn’t all too clear in the gathering dark began to make Chimera annoyed, and then slightly nervous when Soma showed no signs of stopping.

Making a decision, Chimera pulled its bike around Soma and forced him to halt. It thought for half a second that Soma was just going to run it over, but Soma stopped with bare millimeters to spare.

“What the hell are you doing?” Soma demanded.

“What are _you_ doing?” Chimera asked. It was pitch black under the trees now, and all it could hear was the idling of his own engine. All it could see was the ill-defined cones of light thrown off by the two headlamps, neither of which illuminated Soma particularly well. It didn’t help that Soma’s headlight was nearly shining directly in Chimera’s borrowed eyes. “There’s nothing out here!”

“Don’t you see them?” Soma gestured around at shadows and trees and the faintest hint of snow.

“See who?” Chimera snapped.

“Them!” Soma gestured again, pointing in one direction and then another as though pointing at specific examples of whatever it was he thought he saw.

Chimera narrowed its eyes and climbed off its bike. It pushed up the visor on Soma’s helmet, but Soma’s face looked perfectly normal. “All I see,” it said, slowly and deliberately, “is trees. We should return to the road.”

“I can’t,” Soma said, ignoring the first half of what Chimera had said. “The butterflies – someone needs me. I have to go.” He swung a leg over his bike to stand on the ground, putting the bike between him and Chimera, and turning off the engine.

“Hey!” Chimera shouted, genuinely startled as Soma ran off into the darkness, chasing something only he could see. “This is not what I signed up for,” it muttered to itself, but it couldn’t very well just leave Soma out there. It turned off the engine on its own bike, reaching over to flip off Soma’s headlight almost as an afterthought. It had learned the hard way that the lights drained the bike’s battery.

With only its own headlight for illumination, Chimera rooted through its bag and Soma’s for what it thought it might need to subdue Soma until he regained his senses, and to not freeze to death in the snow that was now beginning to fall in case it couldn’t track Soma down quickly enough. Switching off its own headlights left Chimera effectively blind for several seconds, until its borrowed eyes compensated for the lack of light as much as possible. Chimera’s own senses helped a little, too, in that it knew in which direction Soma had gone and helped it see enough not to trip over its own feet in the dark.

Muttering imprecations to itself, Chimera fixed the location of the bikes in its mind and noted the direction Soma had gone in order to not get completely lost, and followed. It could hear Soma ahead of it, faintly, crashing through what little underbrush there was, and it could see evidence of Soma’s passage in the disturbed loam at its feet. It could also tell that the falling snow would obscure those tracks sooner or later, making it an inappropriate method of finding the bikes and the road again.

Chimera moved as silently as it could, leaving as little trace as it could. Periodically it bent a branch or wedged a rock in such a way that it had visual verification of its path, but in a way that wouldn’t lead anything straight to his escape strategy. It occurred to Chimera that it was perhaps being slightly paranoid, but in its long experience, things that showed themselves to one individual and not another were never benevolent. It also had to consider that Soma had been broken, somehow. The thought made it sad, and Chimera pushed it away.

The sounds of Soma’s passage had faded away while Chimera wasn’t specifically listening to them, but Chimera could still see where he had gone; the trail, such as it was, led to a division – one way led upwards, the other down. Chimera couldn’t tell which way Haruto had gone.

The path upwards skipped across the first outcropping of rock Chimera had seen since they’d pulled off the road, and if the road itself continued in the same pattern, the path would eventually intersect it. Perhaps. It looked almost inviting, as if it were the safer option, the option that would lead Chimera back to where it wanted to go, back to light and warmth and other people. Chimera growled, deep in its throat, and looked at the path leading downwards.

It was steep, and if Soma had followed it, Chimera wasn’t sure that he could make it safely without the enhancement that Chimera’s senses gave it. Human eyes alone would have a great deal of trouble navigating the downward path. The falling snow thickened briefly, sending prickling chills ghosting across Chimera’s exposed skin, and it took a deep breath and closed its borrowed eyes.

 A vague sense of magic radiated upwards from Chimera’s left, from the path leading downwards. Chimera cleared its mind, recognizing a faintly seductive note to the impression of magic and actively blocking it out. Chimera opened its eyes again, glancing at both paths once again. The sense of safety from the upward path had faded, and the downward path was smoother than Chimera had initially thought. It could see half of a footprint in the downward path as well, filling with snow. Soma had gone that way.

Chimera picked its way down the path, careful to pay attention to both where it had gone and where it was going; it had no desire to inflict damage on Kosuke’s body. The path wound down farther than Chimera would have guessed, ending in a small platform of bare rock. Wind swirled across it, removing the snow as soon as it fell, leaving the rock unevenly damp. Soma was nowhere to be seen. Chimera dropped to a crouch, moving forward and peering over the edge.

The rocky platform was only a meter or so high, but the thickness of the trees and the dark of the starless night contributed to the impression of height. Chimera could barely make anything out at all with its borrowed eyes, but its innate senses let it see the path through the trees that Soma had most likely followed. Chimera let itself down from the platform quietly, and crept between the tree trunks.

The trees were close together, closer than Chimera had seen before, covered with sticky sap. It avoided touching them as much as possible, focusing so much attention on the narrow gaps that when a clearing opened up, Chimera stumbled into it.

A small building stood at the center of the clearing, visible even in the murk. It was dilapidated, clearly abandoned for a significant amount of time, but its windows were intact even as its front door hung off its sliding track to lean against one wall. The thatch of its roof – and most of the buildings Chimera had seen were tiled, making the thatch stand out even more – was uneven, with more than one clearly visible hole. The sense of magic was strongest here, although Chimera could still barely feel it. Soma was standing halfway between the edge of the trees and the building, one foot in front of the other as if frozen in place.

Chimera walked up to him, carefully and quietly. “Soma Haruto,” it said, pitching its voice low.

Soma’s face contorted, briefly, and then he finished the step he’d been taking, stopping in a perfectly natural pose. “I think we should stop here,” he said, not quite brightly but with more enthusiasm than he’d shown for a night’s resting place in weeks.

“I think we should return to the bikes,” Chimera said, not standing between Soma and the building. It didn’t want to turn its back to it, and ended up somewhat off to Soma’s side. Soma didn’t turn to look at Chimera; his gaze was fixed on the door for all of that the rest of his mannerisms were perfectly relaxed.

“I have a feeling,” Soma said. “Someone here needs me.”

“Someone here wants to eat you,” Chimera muttered. Whatever was in the building felt wrong, and Soma wasn’t operating at his best. Regroup and return was the order of the day, or regroup and get as far away as possible.

“I have to help,” Soma said. “They led me here for a reason.”

Chimera squeezed its eyes shut briefly, and then stepped between Soma and the building to take Soma by the shoulders. Kosuke and Soma were precisely the same height, letting Chimera easily look Soma in the eye. Soma still wasn’t meeting his gaze, was still fixated on the door as though he could see it through Chimera’s borrowed head. “There are no butterflies,” Chimera said anyway. “There were never butterflies. We need to go.”

Soma blinked, focusing on Chimera for the first time. “I can’t leave someone behind if they need help,” he whispered, and leaned forward to kiss Chimera lightly on the lips. “It’ll be okay, Chimera. I’ll protect you.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Chimera muttered, but Soma had stepped around it and onto the porch surrounding the building, and Chimera might as well have been shouting at nothing for all Soma appeared to hear. “I should just leave you here,” Chimera said, but Soma didn’t appear to hear that either, standing in front of the door with his head tilted ever so slightly to the side as if listening to something else, and Chimera stepped onto the uneven wooden slats.

The sound of the wind vanished, leaving a silence so profound it almost made Chimera’s ears ring. More than the silence, what led Chimera to freeze absolutely still as if it were prey was the sight of literally hundreds of butterflies. They covered the building, perching on every inch of its uneven walls, wings moving gently. Chimera could see clearly, even in the dim light, that the butterflies were white shading to a deep blue at the very edges of the wings. The blue was the only color Chimera could see; even the butterflies jointed bodies and legs were white, and the curved antennae also.

A ripple ran across the gathered insects, and with a tiny jolt, Chimera saw that it had been slightly mistaken. The butterflies’ pinprick eyes were a rich and inexplicably horrifying yellow. Chimera bit down on the challenging growl that wanted to rip out of its throat. There was a sense of long-lost familiarity about the veritable sea of insects, overlaid with a tinge of wariness, and Chimera felt it should tread cautiously until it remembered exactly where it had seen something like this before.

The memory refused to surface, and Chimera snarled. It stepped closer to Soma, intending on shielding him from the ill effects of whatever was going on, but Soma stubbornly remained between Chimera and the door. The butterflies rippled again, wings spreading fully outward before closing to reveal undersides that were just as brilliant white as the top. The unnatural coloration set Chimera’s teeth on edge.

Soma, before Chimera could say anything, turned a brilliant smile in Chimera’s direction and squeezed Chimera’s borrowed hand briefly. “It’s going to be okay,” he said again, as if Chimera was the one who needed reassuring, and stepped inside the building. Chimera ran after him, skidding to a halt in an empty hallway with Soma nowhere to be seen.

“I’m not playing this game,” it said. The hallway was longer than the building, in perfect condition with the floor polished to a high gloss, and lit by natural light coming from skylights overhead and windows behind Chimera. “Cease and desist.”

The hallway refused to budge, sitting innocently and quietly with not a single butterfly in evidence, warm as a spring day with no sign of the snowy night outside. Chimera threw back its head, losing patience, and howled the challenge it had declined outside; there was no point in holding back now.

Walls flickered under Chimera’s barrage of sound, the noise bouncing back and around until Chimera could barely tell the difference between its own voice and the dissonant echoes, and then snapped into view as a dirty entrance hallway with a ledge leading upwards. Chimera did not remove its shoes before stepping onto the rough floor.

Soma was still nowhere to be seen, but Chimera could feel the raw sense of his magic. Soma had transformed and was fighting something. Chimera ran toward him, only to come up against a dead end. The wall was flimsy, and Chimera shattered it with very little effort, only to find that Soma wasn’t on the other side. It could still sense him, and went through hallway after hallway, wall after wall without ever feeling as though it was getting closer. It could feel Soma’s magic fading, though, feel the start of the telltale flicker that heralded Soma running out of mana.

“Idiot,” Chimera muttered, not sure whether it was referring to Soma or itself.

It was in a square room, window on one side that should have looked into the heart of the building but instead showed a moonlit grass-covered plain. Chimera dropped to the floor, sitting cross-legged, and closed its borrowed eyes. It should have known better, after the shenanigans with the fork in the road outside and the butterflies, but it was so much closer to the source of power that it hadn’t been able to separate what was coming from outside.

The feel of the room dropped away as Chimera centered itself, withdrawing its senses and its energy to the boundaries of its borrowed skin. Once it had cleared its own projections, it turned its attention to the outside. It could still clearly feel Soma, fighting and reaching the end of his rope, mana somehow bound up in a metaphysical box, but it could also feel the thing lurking at the center of the building.

The creature – it might have been human once, but it certainly wasn’t human now – was tangled in the building and in something else almost in the same way that Chimera itself was tangled up in Kosuke, and it almost felt sorry for the creature, except that the creature had chosen to entangle Soma and therefore Chimera itself in its machinations. Chimera had no pity for a poorly chosen fight.

It opened its borrowed eyes, seeing a short corridor with rough walls, and a set of stairs going upwards. The building had had a high enough roof to support a second floor, Chimera remembered, and it stood smoothly. The wooden supports that held the building up groaned alarmingly as Chimera slowly climbed the stairs, creaking under the strain of the conflict Chimera could now hear going on above its head.

The top of the stairs was covered by a trapdoor, and Chimera got as close as it could without opening the door. It preferred to give the creature as little warning as possible, although it suspected it was a moot point. It could feel Haruto fading, leaving more of the creature’s attention free to watch Chimera.

The door opened easily, Chimera ducking away as it cleared the doorway and rolled to the side in a single smooth motion. It wouldn’t have been able to pull it off, when it had first found itself stuck in Kosuke’s body, but it had gotten more comfortable in the intervening months. That level of harmony was the only reason Chimera wasn’t still standing on the stairs when they were hit with a bolt of pure power. It came up on its feet, roaring at the creature, but the creature was nowhere to be seen.

Only Soma was visible, wearing green and surrounded by a raging wind, until Chimera looked up. Suspended from the peak of the roof something that might have been human; its body was bluish black and hard, wrapped in a chitinous shell and bound at each joint by thread or wire. Growing things curled around the wires, wrapping the body and extending into the ceiling, colored the same bluish shade of black until it was hard to tell where the vines ended and the body began. Only the eyes stood out, inhumanly wide and pure white with a dot of blue in the center. They looked mad.

Lightning flickered out from Soma to the creature in the ceiling, crackling along its skin and crawling up into the roof. The thatch smoldered, bits of orange flame failing to catch and dying into tendrils of smoke. Butterflies rained down, wings scorched, filling the air with the scent of burning.

Chimera could see now that the creature in the ceiling was a Phantom, or had been a Phantom. It hadn’t broken free of its Gate. The Gate had held onto it, but instead of subsuming it into the Underworld, the Gate had changed around its Phantom. It had hibernated in a cocoon until it had hatched, obscene hybrid unable to fully inhabit one world or the other, Phantom stuck in a decaying human body. Its name echoed through the air, syllables Chimera couldn’t hear with its ears. Nausea swept over Chimera at how narrowly it had escaped a similar fate, one that might still catch up to it if it didn’t get free.

The creature – Calyptra – was starving, Chimera could now see, its Phantom side unable to break free to harvest mana until it had halfway consumed itself in a cycle of destruction that hadn’t broken with the energy he could see it pulling out of Soma. The cycle only moved faster, the creature’s skin becoming more and more brittle as Soma desperately tried to protect himself and break the human soul free at the same time.

Chimera didn’t think Soma realized the Phantom had already eaten what remained of the Gate, and that there was nothing left to save. It tried to knock Soma away from the thing in the ceiling, only to bounce off of his shield of wind and dent the nearest wall.

“Soma Haruto!” Chimera tried to shout, but its voice was lost in the howl.

It tried again, with the same results; it didn’t think Soma was even aware that it had entered the fray, focused on the Phantom as he was. With the echo chamber of tainted mana, Chimera wasn’t surprised. It took a deep breath and summoned strength, sacrificing speed in the process, and finally managed to knock Soma out of his shield. Soma skidded across the floor, armor dissolving.

Chimera stood over him, discarding strength and gathering the Chameleo whip to repel the snake-quick strikes Calyptra sent downwards while Soma was vulnerable. “We need,” it started.

“Fire,” Soma interrupted, pushing himself to his feet. A bruise was forming along his jawline and he favored his right leg, but his movements were quick and sure as he scanned a transformation ring. “We need to use fire.”

Chimera nodded, blocking Calyptra’s next round of strikes with the whip. One nearly made it past, and Chimera crushed it beneath its boot. The Phantom howled, voice painful for all that it was thin and insubstantial, and it was all Chimera could do not to clap its hands over its borrowed ears.

“Now!” Flame roared past Chimera from behind, and Chimera added its own fire to the mix. Calyptra shrieked again, vines shriveling in the heat and wires holding it to the ceiling crisping to ash. Free for the first time in what must have felt like forever, Calyptra fell to the floor. It stood, still burning, and Chimera poured more fire onto it. It rippled, tainted mana falling away and dissolving to show a proper Phantom core. Chimera plunged its borrowed hands into the center of the inferno to grab the newly born Phantom by the throat. Calyptra struggled, wide eyes growing wider as its wings fanned the flames, as Chimera consumed it bite by bite.

The roof was burning, smoke filling the air as Chimera dropped what remained of the Phantom. Soma barreled into it from behind, knocking it through the wall and on a gracefully controlled trajectory onto the snow-covered ground below. It was a softer landing than Chimera had expected, although it could already feel the bruises. Soma groaned underneath it, and Chimera helped him to his feet.

“Can we go now?” it said.

“One more thing,” Soma replied, and switched to blue.

The Phantom was gone, but the building continued to burn. Soma poured water on it, damping the flames until there was nothing left but hissing steam and smoke rising from a skeletal and charred framework. The clouds had cleared away, leaving a nearly full moon to illuminate the clearing, and Chimera could see the start of true dawn off to the east. “Now?” it said, when the last of the orange light of fire had faded.

“Uh huh,” Soma said vaguely. “Going would be good.” He stubbornly clung to consciousness all the way back to where Chimera had left the bikes, finally passing out only when Chimera had gotten Kosuke’s tent set up in a bid to keep them both from freezing to death until Soma could get back on his bike and ride.

Chimera was jarred out of an uneasy half-sleep by Soma returning to the tent; it didn’t necessarily need to sleep, but it had found that at least a little went a long way toward keeping his borrowed body functioning at peak efficiency without burning through excessive amounts of mana. Today, Chimera had chosen to sleep out of boredom as much as anything else, knowing from experience that Soma would need time to recover from the mana he’d poured into the fight with the not-quite-dead Gate. Soma kicked off his boots at the entrance to the tent and crawled back under the sleeping bag Chimera had spread out. Shared body heat went a long way toward reduced mana expenditure as well.

“That was a Gate,” Soma said, shivering slightly and pressed against Chimera’s side as if for warmth, although he didn’t feel cold to Chimera.

“It used to be a Gate,” Chimera corrected. “What we saw was an abomination.” Not that it had stopped him from eating it, once the Phantom had been properly born.

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” Soma had a note in his voice that Chimera wasn’t sure it liked, one that implied that Soma had found a new windmill at which to tilt.

“No,” Chimera said, which was the truth. It had never seen a Phantom fail to properly form from a Gate; either the Gate fell into despair and the Phantom was born, or – rarely – the human suppressed the despair and gained the ability to learn how to use its own mana. A Phantom stuck halfway between its Gate’s Underworld and the real world didn’t happen, or it hadn’t before.

“I have to look into it,” Soma said.

“No,” Chimera said again. “You’re under contract.”

“People could get hurt,” Soma argued. Chimera couldn’t see his face; Soma’s voice was slightly muffled by Chimera’s shirt. “This is what I do, Chimera.”

“You made a promise to me,” Chimera said. “And to Koyomi.”

“I have to help the living,” Soma said. “Just give me a little more time.” He paused long enough that Chimera thought he’d fallen asleep again. “It might help you too,” he added finally.

Chimera decided that Soma being perceptive about the similarities between Calyptra and Chimera itself while half asleep was annoying, and that there was a better than even shot that Soma wouldn’t remember the conversation when he woke again in any case; he usually didn’t remember waking mid-recovery. “Fine,” it said. “Take as much time as you need.”

Soma started to say thank you, but didn’t get past the first syllable.

Much to Chimera’s annoyance, Soma not only remembered the conversation upon waking but had hung onto his newfound determination to take up a new crusade. Chimera tried to talk him into at least using Teleport to get to wherever he wanted to go, but Soma claimed it used too much mana for too little gain. Chimera shrugged; it knew exactly where the road was. Soma led them through the narrow local streets to a larger road, and yet another road, and finally to a highway. The sight of so much traffic surrounded by artificial light almost felt like culture shock, given how long Chimera had been following Soma around the middle of nowhere.

Chimera half-expected Soma to stop longer than it took to fill the gas tanks, but as soon as the bikes had been refueled, Soma aimed his bike at the highway again. He went for several hours without either stopping or making sure Chimera was following, attention seemingly completely focused on getting as far as possible in as little time as possible.

For its part, Chimera assumed they were headed for Tokyo either because the White Wizard – Fueki, it thought the man’s name had been – had had a great deal of research collected regarding magic and its history, or because Gates tended to be drawn toward large concentrations of people. The reason Wiseman, when acting as Wiseman and not the White Wizard, had sent his Phantoms out to find Gates in Tokyo and nowhere else was a simple case of efficiency. The higher the number of people per square kilometer, the higher the chance of finding a Gate, and not just because there were more people readily available.

Gates migrated from areas of low-density population to population centers, and Tokyo was the highest concentration of all. Wiseman could have gone to Osaka, or Nagoya, or Fukuoka – the percentage of Gates in each of those areas was high as well – but Tokyo, despite the irritating likelihood of opposition, had the best probability of finding and using Gates. Soma hadn’t stopped all of Wiseman’s attempts. He hadn’t even come close.

Chimera made a bet with itself as to whether or not they would make it as far as Osaka before Soma decided to stop for the night, after considering the probability of Soma not stopping for the night at all. It lost both bets when Soma pulled off the highway in Hyogo, driving somewhat aimlessly before stopping in front of a hotel that looked both as if it had been constructed in the last century and as if it had been cleaned and maintained at some point within the last several days. Chimera kept its mouth shut on any comparisons to where Soma had insisted they sleep in the past.

Checking in to a hotel that wasn’t run by an octogenarian keeping records in a paper notebook was far less frustrating than Chimera was used to, requiring only a little basic information plus payment and identification from Soma. Within just a few minutes, Soma was handing a second key to Chimera and wearily carrying his bag down a hallway. The building, having multiple stories, even had stairs, which Soma bypassed entirely to stand in front of an elevator. Chimera blinked; it didn’t like the claustrophobic boxes, although whether that was its own preference or a holdover from Kosuke, it wasn’t sure. Kosuke had always taken a great deal of delight in running up and down stairs, and the memory wasn’t as painful as it could have been.

Soma, for his part, moved with very little energy. His face was flushed pink, despite the lack of exertion, and Chimera suppressed a sigh. At least, this time, it had something resembling a city to explore while Soma finished replenishing his mana stores and his physical stamina. It left its bag on one of the two beds in the room and was out the door before Soma had gotten more than a few steps into the room.

The city Soma had chosen to stop in was overlooked by a multi-story castle, lit up for the night but closed when Chimera wandered in its general direction. It considered climbing the walls out of curiosity – when it had last seen buildings like this, they had been in use for completely different purposes than the current state of tourist attraction – but ultimately decided against it. Chimera circled the building again anyway, for the sense of nostalgia for a time before it had been locked in a belt.

The city was quiet, no Gates that Chimera could sense for all that it had enough population to attract at least a few. The late hour was likely to blame, Chimera thought, but the act of walking around felt good, and it had gotten enough mana out of the abomination to last for a while. It wondered briefly if the corruption of the transformation process had affected the mana it had eaten, but there seemed to be no ill effects. Chimera stopped for a while on a public bench, feet curled up underneath it, and sank into itself just to make sure.

The attempt at introspection was interrupted – granted, when it was nearly over, or Chimera would have been far more annoyed – by a tired official telling Chimera that public benches were not for sleeping. Chimera chose not to dignify the statement with a response and returned to the hotel. The stairs were narrower than it would have liked, but it still took joy in running up all six flights. Its bag was right where it had left it, and Soma was curled into a ball on top of the other bed.

Chimera frowned. Soma hadn’t gotten under the blanket, and he didn’t usually sleep in such a contorted positon. It turned the light on, and Soma flinched. His face was still flushed. Curious, Chimera touched it to find it warmer than usual. “Soma Haruto,” it said, poking Soma in the shoulder.

“It’s cold,” Soma said, curling tighter.

“You’re warm,” Chimera told him. “If you’re cold, try getting under the blanket.”

Grumbling, Soma wriggled into the bed without at any point extending his limbs. It seemed to be much more effort than it was worth, but Chimera wasn’t going to pass judgment. Once under the blanket, Soma looked no less miserable. “It’s still cold,” he said.

Chimera touched his skin again. “You’re not cold,” it said. “You’re definitely warm.”

Soma blinked at him, looking dismayed. “Maybe I caught a cold,” he said, which made absolutely zero sense whatsoever.

“Go back to sleep,” Chimera said, but the unusual behavior was somewhat disconcerting. It wasn’t worried, it tried to tell itself, it just needed to make sure its assets were in the best possible condition. The justification didn’t quite ring true, even in the privacy of its own thoughts, and Chimera went for the next best method of not dealing with the possibility that how it felt was changing – distraction.

Remembering that Kosuke’s phone was not only a phone, but also a source of information, Chimera plugged it into the wall. The hazy memories it still had weren’t much help in figuring out exactly what to do to get the device to divulge its information, but Chimera was nothing if not persistent. And bored. The information Chimera got out of the device, however, was conflicting and confusing, and left Chimera with more questions than answers.

“You are all crazy,” it said to Soma, who by this point was dead to the world again and didn’t defend humanity in the slightest. Chimera sighed, stole Soma’s wallet, and went to the front desk to extend their stay by another night. The clerk, having checked them in to begin with, didn’t bat an eyelash at Chimera returning with its traveling companion’s documents. He also provided an aggressively excessive amount of tea when asked, his demeanor unpleasant enough that Chimera was sorry he wasn’t a Gate and could therefore not be eaten.

By the time Soma crawled out from underneath his blanket, looking more miserable than the night before, Chimera was sitting on the bed opposite and staring at him with a pile of supplies.

“What?” Soma said, voice thick.

“You are not fulfilling the contract, Soma Haruto.” Chimera pointed at the still-warm cup of tea next to the bed. “You are not functioning at optimal levels. You cannot assist me if you are not functioning at optimal levels.”

Soma looked at Chimera as though Chimera was the one acting irrationally. “What?” he said again.

“Exposure to temperature extremes along with excessive physical stress has adverse effects on human physiology,” Chimera said. Soma wasn’t drinking the tea. It put the cup in his hand. “You should take measures to repair it.”

“What have you been reading?” Soma asked, finally taking the cup but not drinking from it. Chimera held up Kosuke’s phone. Soma groaned, burying his face in his free hand. “I’m fine,” he said.

Chimera stared at him steadily, without blinking, and reached out to verify that Soma’s skin was still warmer than normal. Soma batted his hand away, nearly spilling the tea in the process, and Chimera growled. Soma stopped struggling and drank the tea, letting Chimera poke at what it would.

“We have to check out,” Soma said, but at least he’d emptied the cup. Chimera handed him a bowl of something that was supposed to be helpful in regaining health, although the runny white mess didn’t look appealing to it in the slightest. Soma made a face at it, and Chimera glared.

“Tomorrow,” it said.

“What?” Soma put the bowl on the nightstand, trying to pretend he was doing no such thing.

“We check out tomorrow. You,” and Chimera stabbed a finger toward Soma, “just. Be human. Fix whatever’s broken.”

Soma ducked his head, shoulders shaking, and it took several seconds for Chimera to figure out that he was laughing. “Thank you,” Soma said finally.

Chimera didn’t bother answering, rolling its eyes instead and sprawling on the other bed. There wouldn’t be much delay if it was lucky, it told itself, and if not, it always had the option of recruiting Mayu or solving the problem on its own. Somehow. Neither option seemed nearly as appealing as they once might have, and Chimera found itself watching Soma surreptitiously from under its borrowed eyelashes and wondering exactly when it had gotten so attached.


	4. Awake

Haruto couldn’t remember ever feeling physically worse; his body ached and when his head wasn’t throbbing, it felt tight like a drum. Chimera’s tea hadn’t helped much; all Haruto wanted to do was sleep. He couldn’t justify wasting time, though, not when something odd had happened to the Gate in Yamaguchi. Odd wasn’t even the right term for it, not nearly enough to describe the visceral horror Haruto had felt when he’d realized what had happened, but he couldn’t quite think properly.

Haruto wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t hallucinating Chimera’s attempts to be helpful, either; not that Chimera was unkind, but _nurturing_ wasn’t a word that described any Phantom, and especially not Chimera. It had been entirely serious in its threats to eat Nitoh, should he fail to feed it mana, and Haruto hadn’t known it to have any tolerance for weakness at all. By all rights, he felt, it should be eating him and moving on to Mayu. Haruto groaned, trying to keep the sound quiet, but he discovered that it was a moot point.

No one else was in the room, although the congealing bowl of okayu on the nightstand still giving off the scent of ginger and scallions gave the lie to the vague hope that Chimera wasn’t acting oddly. Haruto pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure, but it didn’t help. He’d been fine the day before, he was all but sure of it.

The suddenness of his symptoms were what drove him to crawl out from beneath the blankets into the freezing room and dig through his pants pockets for Connect. Shivering, Haruto pulled Garuda out of its box at home and summoned the little PlaMonster for the first time in months. “I need you to look for anything unusual,” he told it, his teeth chattering. The little creature darted out the window as soon as Haruto opened it, and he slammed it closed again before it could get any colder.

Only after Garuda was gone did it occur to Haruto that he had no way of remotely accessing Garuda’s information without Koyomi’s crystal ball, and would have to wait for it to come back. Unless, he thought, following Garuda around the city, or at least performing his own reconnaissance would help; it would cut down on the amount of time it took for him to get actionable information. He rubbed at his temples, willing the pain to go away, and started the laborious process of getting dressed.

Several layers later, Haruto was still cold, but at least he felt a little better; either the act of moving had helped, or he’d managed to distract himself. He wasn’t about to examine himself any more closely, just in case he undid all his hard work. At the last moment before leaving the room, he remembered both the room key and his cell phone, and stuffed both into his jacket pockets. He took the elevator down to the first floor and went out a side door, shading his eyes from the overly bright December sun. The sky was far too blue to be comfortable.

Haruto left his bike where it was; riding it wouldn’t let him move slowly enough to get any sort of impression of the surrounding area, not when he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. He put his hands in his pockets and walked toward the city, senses extended as much as possible for anything at all out of the ordinary. Several minutes into his foray, he thought Garuda could use some backup, and summoned Unicorn to assist its fellow PlaMonster. It raced circles around him for a few seconds before dashing off enthusiastically, and Haruto felt vaguely guilty for not paying more attention to the little creatures.

The city stubbornly refused to show anything out of the ordinary at first, just streets full of people walking from place to place with faces covered against the cold air. The sound of so many people packed into one place reminded him enough of Tokyo that Haruto suddenly felt acutely homesick on top of anything else, and he reached into his pocket for the Hope ring. It was exactly where it was supposed to be, and he felt a little calmer for having it against his skin.

Haruto wasn’t sure how long he’d been walking when the cell phone in one of his inner pockets started ringing. He dug it out, eventually, by which point it had stopped making the obnoxious noise he’d inexplicably chosen as a ringtone. He looked at it, but the screen was stubbornly dark, and he sighed. He was in the process of putting it back when it began to ring again, startling him so badly he nearly dropped it. Nitoh’s name flashed on the caller ID, and Haruto wondered why he hadn’t replaced it with Chimera’s. He shook his head at the thought and answered.

“Where are you?” Chimera demanded.

“There’s something off,” Haruto said.

“That doesn’t – where did you go?”

“It’s okay,” Haruto tried to explain. “Garuda and Unicorn are looking for the source of the problem. Once I find it, I can deal with it.”

“Come back. Now.” Chimera did not appear to be convinced of a link between Haruto’s symptoms and a potential situation. Haruto considered briefly and then discarded the thought that whatever was making him sick was also affecting Chimera’s judgment; the Phantom was resistant to magic, for all that it needed to eat mana to survive.

“Garuda and Unicorn are on it,” he reassured Chimera. “We’ll fix everything.”

“Soma Haruto, where exactly are you?” Chimera wasn’t going to be dissuaded, but Garuda was flying toward him, and Haruto could see Unicorn dashing along the ground just below it.

“I have to go,” he said, and disconnected the call. He couldn’t tell what the PlaMonsters were saying, precisely, as they chittered excitedly and raced around him, but they’d found something. Haruto crouched down, picking up Unicorn and holding out a hand for Garuda to land. They refused to settle, Unicorn running up Haruto’s arm to nose at his hair and Garuda pecking at his wrist. “Show me,” Haruto said, and they both flung themselves in the same direction.

Now was the time to use Connect to summon his bike; Haruto revved the engine and followed his PlaMonsters through the city. They were still quicker than he was, darting around corners and down the street, and Haruto left a trail of disgruntled citizens in his wake. He called back the occasional apology at first, but following the PlaMonsters was taking all the concentration he had. He leaned forward, barely missing a street sign as he skidded around one corner, and then he saw it.

The PlaMonsters had led him out of the city proper and into what might have been a park; Haruto could see the tell-tale roof of a shrine over the treetops. He left the bike at the end of the road, running toward the Phantom standing on the steps leading up the side of the mountain. It didn’t look quite right, though, limbs wide and almost amorphous as it straightened and spread its arms apart. Wire glinted from its center, and Haruto could nearly see a human form bound into the Phantom. Its legs were twisted around each other, its arms pulled up and back, head hanging down onto its chest. Haruto couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but he felt the same sense of wrongness he’d felt with the butterflies.

The Phantom laughed, sending icy wind ghosting over Haruto’s skin and cutting right through his clothes. He stumbled to a halt, unable to do more than wrap his arms around himself for several seconds. The Phantom moved closer, gliding bonelessly over the ground. It cast an eerie blue light visible even in the full sun, and threw off waves of cold. Haruto’s hands were numb, but he could still move them well enough to scan his ring and initiate the transformation into Flame Style.

The chill did not abate with the transformation; if anything, it got worse, and Haruto dropped to one knee. His vision wavered at the edges as the Phantom kept approaching, tendrils lifting off its skin and reaching for him. Haruto knew with absolute certainty that if the not-Phantom touched him, he was going to die. He threw himself clumsily sideways, limbs stiff with pain and cold, and scanned Light. The resulting blinding flash bought him a few seconds to summon his primary weapon in sword mode.

The Phantom shuddered to a halt, tendrils snapping back into its body, and Haruto brought the SwordGun down in a Flame Slash. It bit deep into the Phantom’s flesh and the human inside threw its head back and screamed. Haruto stumbled back, horrified. The Gate was still alive. 

Barely keeping a grip on the SwordGun, Haruto scanned Bind, trying to contain the creature rather than kill it. There had to be a way to put it back, to suppress the Phantom without killing the Gate, even if it had fully manifested. The Phantom batted the chains aside, tendrils slicing through them, and Haruto tried again. The second attempt wrapped the Phantom, holding it briefly immobile.

“Can you hear me?” Haruto shouted at the Gate, but he didn’t respond. He wasn’t showing the tell-tale signs of despair, and if it hadn’t been for the scream, Haruto would have been sure he was already dead. Haruto shouted again anyway; he had to try. The Gate simply hung in the center of the Phantom, lit grotesquely blue.

With an ear-piercing shriek, the Phantom burst through the chains and reached for Haruto again. He ducked to the side, and the tendrils crashed against a tree. Bits of wood and bark sprayed through the air, and Haruto dodged again. Sword Mode cut through the tendrils, and the Phantom pulled them back more quickly than Haruto’s eye could follow. He tried to lift the sword again for a second Flame Slash, but it was too heavy for him to get the tip off the ground and he couldn’t get enough air.

Haruto dropped to one knee and shifted the SwordGun to Gun Mode, leaden weights dragging at his limbs. Freed of the burden of standing, he finally had the energy to lift the SwordGun and aim it. He aimed for the Phantom’s head, the only target where he could be more or less sure of not hitting the Gate inside, but his hands were shaking and he missed more often than not. The Phantom howled when struck, and charged forward.

“Not today,” Haruto whispered, and scanned his transformation ring across the SwordGun. It chanted its standby charge, heavier each time. Haruto braced it against his knee and kept the barrel pointed at the Phantom. It was nearly close enough to touch before Flame Shooting erupted from the barrel and threw it back out of the trees and onto the narrow open space. Smoke rose from its skin, and Haruto could breathe again. He pushed himself upright.

The Phantom wasn’t entirely defeated, but it was down at least for the moment. Haruto shook his head against the wavering at the edge of his sight and was rewarded with throbbing pain for his trouble. He slid to his knees next to the prone Phantom, careful not to touch it. He reached toward the Gate, not entirely sure what he was planning on doing with it, and something tackled him from the side.

Haruto came up swinging at the new threat, barely pulling the blow when he registered Chimera. The SwordGun left a furrow of displaced earth in an arc, its discharge blasting a hole in the ground and raining dirt. “What are you _doing_?” he hissed.

“It was a threat,” Chimera said, entirely unfazed for someone who’d nearly caught a fireball to the face.

“It’s down and out,” Haruto said. “It’s not a threat. Look at it.” The outstretched tendril gave the lie to his words; had Chimera not knocked him out of the way, the Phantom would have entangled Haruto. Given that the last abnormal Phantom had tried to drain his mana, Haruto was fairly sure this one would have done the same. “Um,” he said. “Thank you.”

Chimera didn’t acknowledge the thanks; he simply switched the object of his attention from Haruto to the not entirely helpless Phantom on the ground. After a silent moment of staring, he rose to his feet and paced deliberately toward it. It reached for him, and Chimera batted the tendrils aside. The Phantom scrabbled backwards, defensive now. Chimera grabbed the tendrils in both hands, grimacing, and snarled a deep guttural note.

“Chimera, stop.” Haruto didn’t know what, exactly, Chimera was doing, but he had an inkling, and he didn’t like it. He slipped Engage on his finger. “Let me try to help.”

“You can’t visit the Gate’s Underworld,” Chimera said, looking at Haruto over his shoulder. “The Gate is already dead.”

“He screamed,” Haruto said softly.

“The Gate is already dead,” Chimera repeated. “It just doesn’t know it. Letting it go would be a mercy.”

“I…” Haruto hesitated, and shook his head. “I have to try.” He scanned the ring, and a portal flickered to life above the Phantom. It looked wrong, edges uneven and indistinct, the clean lines that should have been present warped and running into each other. “What?”

“You can’t help him,” Chimera said, not unkindly, and pulled the enveloping Phantom’s center mass apart. The Gate dropped to the ground, unmistakably long dead now that it was no longer illuminated by the Phantom’s eerie light. The portal flickered again and faded.

The Phantom shuddered, opacity spreading over its torn skin until it was as solid as anything else. Chimera’s eyes narrowed as the Phantom’s tendrils whipped around it in a frenzy, fingers bent into claws, but before he could make a move, Haruto had scanned his transformation ring to activate another Flame Shooting. The Phantom hit the ground hard, shock wave rippling outwards.

Chimera pounced on the escaping energy, drawing it inwards until there was nothing left of the Phantom. Haruto disengaged his transformation and left Chimera to it, turning to the body of the Gate. The face wasn’t recognizable, but he could see the corner of a wallet peeking out of the Gate’s pocket, and he carefully pulled it out. Handling only the edges, Haruto opened the wallet.

The driver’s license inside had a Tokyo address, and a photograph that Haruto recognized; he’d last seen this man deciding to move overseas to rekindle his musical career. Haruto frowned at the license; its issue date was just a few months earlier, meaning the pianist had returned to Japan at the end of summer. “What are you doing out here?” he asked absently, not really expecting an answer from a dead man. He’d had spectacularly poor timing, Haruto thought; he’d returned to Tokyo just in time to get caught up in the Sabbath.

“We should go,” Chimera said from far too close, and Haruto suppressed a flinch. He slid the wallet back into the Gate’s pocket and stood, wiping his hands on his pants.

“Two is a pattern,” Haruto said, heading for his bike. He’d nearly reached it when Chimera yanked him back, clamping a hand down on his forehead. “What are you doing _now_?”

Chimera frowned at him. “You’re not as warm.”

Haruto blinked. He hadn’t noticed when the acute sense of malaise had dropped away, but trying to pin down exactly when he’d felt physically better, he thought it might have been at the defeat of the Phantom. “Just lucky, I guess,” he said, but the words rang hollow. The first abnormal Phantom had hijacked his eyes, generating hallucinations of butterflies, and if the second hadn’t been physically affecting him, it was a remarkable coincidence.

“They were linked to you,” Chimera said, which was precisely the sort of insight Haruto had been hoping to avoid.

“We don’t know that,” Haruto said.

The corner of Chimera’s mouth turned down. “You’re contracted to _me_ ,” he said. As if that settled the matter, he turned and mounted his bike, driving back toward the city.

Haruto squeezed his eyes closed, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. The abnormal Phantoms weren’t Chimera’s fault, and Haruto couldn’t exactly blame Chimera for not being altruistic. It was perfectly reasonable that Chimera was worried about himself. Haruto climbed on the bike and drove slowly back to the hotel, still tired despite the effects of whatever the Phantom had done dispersing.

Chimera was sitting at the small table in the corner when Haruto walked in the door. The other chair had been pulled out, and the same bowl of okayu Haruto had avoided eating earlier was in front of it. Little wisps of steam curled invitingly upward, but Haruto had no desire to eat it. “Chimera,” he said, but the Phantom didn’t appear to be paying attention to him at all. Haruto dropped into the chair, picking up the spoon that had also thoughtfully been provided.

Stirring the runny white porridge did nothing to provoke any sense of appetite, but Haruto took a bite of it anyway. It tasted exactly as he’d expected, which was to say earthy and full of ginger. Chimera was watching him out of the corner of his eye, Haruto noticed, but for all that he hadn’t wanted the okayu before he’d actually started eating it, he was suddenly starving. The porridge vanished almost too quickly, leaving Chimera with a vaguely satisfied expression and Haruto annoyed at being condescended to. He couldn’t deny that he felt better, though, which only deepened his annoyance.

Haruto didn’t remember unpacking as many of his possessions as were scattered around the room, and he began putting them back into his bag with ill grace. Chimera, for his part, remained seated, watching Haruto with hooded eyes. Haruto kept his mouth shut, pausing only when he folded the pants he’d been wearing the day before and realized they were significantly cleaner than the pants he was currently wearing. Transformation or not, he was covered in dirt.

“I’m taking a bath,” he said. He was in the bathroom with the door locked before noticing that the combined shower and bathtub was a terrible place to soak, if he had to scrub down in it first. Haruto took a shower instead, lingering under the heated spray. It didn’t quite compare to the soothing heat of a proper bath, but at least the water felt good on his skin, and he was less irritated by the time he’d dressed in cleaner clothes.

Chimera had failed to take the hint and pack his own possessions; there was no reason for them to waste an entire day with the influence of the Phantom gone. At the very least, even if the sun had already set, the evening was young enough to give them plenty of time. Haruto dropped his bag on the empty chair with a thump.

“We can make it to Tokyo by midnight,” he said.

Chimera looked pointedly at the darkened sky. “Daylight’s better for driving,” he said, and the irritation flared right back up. Haruto took a deep breath and then another, trying not to say something he was going to regret.

“I have to look into these incidents,” he started carefully.

“Why?” Chimera interrupted.

“Why?” Haruto stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words. “If I don’t, who will? Gates are – are being trapped by Phantoms that aren’t fully materializing. They’re dying. This is my responsibility.”

“Why you?” Chimera finally looked at him, still lounging in the chair as if completely relaxed, but Haruto could see the tension radiating off of him.

“Who else is there?” Haruto repeated. “Fueki trained _me_. I’m the only one that can handle something like this.”

“You,” Chimera said, “Or Mayu, or either of the other wizards Fueki trained, or whoever it was that taught him, or their students. You’re not the only one.”

“These are the people I couldn’t save,” Haruto snapped, and clenched his mouth shut.

“Two people isn’t a pattern,” Chimera said after a long pause. Haruto wasn’t sure if that meant Chimera had given up trying to talk him out of his sense of responsibility or if he was just trying to change the subject, but he answered the question Chimera hadn’t specifically asked anyway.

“It’s less likely to be a coincidence than one.” He sat on the bed. “Takagi – the musician – was in Tokyo during the Sabbath. It’s not much of a starting point, especially if I don’t know who the other Gate was or where she encountered a Phantom, but maybe this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.” Fueki’s library might have useful information, if Haruto could stomach setting foot in the man’s house again. It held too many memories.

“Am I part of the pattern?” Chimera asked, voice low. There was nothing uncertain about it, but Haruto couldn’t read the tone.

“You’re still alive,” he replied, and a little of Chimera’s tension drained away. “If we leave soon, we can make Tokyo by midnight,” he said again. From there, it wouldn’t take long to reach Fueki’s home.

“Five minutes,” Chimera said.

Haruto blinked, wondering if he’d missed part of the conversation. “What?” he said finally, but Chimera stood instead of answering and started neatly packing the remainder of what he’d apparently unpacked. He stowed whatever he’d bought, as well, placing each item with finicky precision. It was mind-numbing to watch, and when Chimera tugged at Haruto’s ankle, he was almost glad of the distraction.

“You’re on my socks,” Chimera said, pulling at them hard enough that Haruto overbalanced. The ceiling seemed like a better view than Chimera’s sudden need for precise order in his duffel bag anyway, and Haruto stayed where he was. The sound of running water came from the bathroom, and Haruto belatedly noticed that Chimera had gotten just as covered in dust and dirt as he had – more so, since Chimera didn’t have the advantage of transformation armor. He groaned slightly as it occurred to him that if Chimera’s new-found obsession with precision extended to bathing, he was going to be in there forever.

At least, Haruto thought, the noise of the shower wasn’t unpleasant. He stretched, listening to the patter of the falling water. He opened his eyes to sunlight creeping along the wall and sat bolt upright. A blanket slid down to his waist, and he wasn’t wearing shoes. _How did I not feel Chimera taking off my shoes_ was his first thought, followed by the realization that they had wasted the entire day after all.

“Oh, good,” Chimera said from the other bed. “You’re awake.”

“Why did you let me sleep?” Haruto rubbed his eyes. They felt sticky, but the lingering vestiges of whatever the Phantom had done to him were gone. “We should be in Tokyo by now.”

Chimera leveled a supremely unimpressed stare at him. “Or you would have driven your bike under a truck because you were too exhausted to pay attention to the road,” he said.

Haruto threw up his hands and struggled out from under the blanket. Three months and it was still impossible to hold a normal conversation with the Phantom, no matter how well he pretended to blend in well when other people were around. “Can we get going now?” he said.

The drive took longer than Haruto had expected, and it was well past full dark by the time they had navigated the highway and the ever increasing traffic as they got closer to the nation’s capital. Fueki’s estate was some distance outside the city, letting them at least avoid the worst of the congestion in the city itself, and Haruto elected not to visit the antique shop before starting his research. He justified his decision internally with the thought that he needed all the time and concentration he could get; Chimera didn’t so much as blink when Haruto informed him of their destination.

It didn’t occur to Haruto as he pulled into the long drive leading to Fueki’s home that the estate shouldn’t have been standing, unoccupied, essentially untouched since the man’s death months before. He parked the bike in front of the darkened house, noting that the front door had been sealed closed. There was a sign he couldn’t read in the dark, and he hefted his bag over his shoulder and headed for the back door. It was sealed shut as well, but there was a window on the second floor that he distinctly remembered didn’t latch properly.

Chimera rolled his eyes when Haruto tossed his bag up on the roof, visible even in the dim lighting, but he swarmed up the side of the house like a cat. Haruto climbed up with somewhat more effort, pushing Chimera’s attempt at a helping hand away, and jimmied the window open. He landed on the upper floor in his boots, feeling a brief pang at the inappropriateness of wearing shoes indoors, and pulled his bag in after him. Chimera followed, eyes reflecting what little light there was with an eerie glow.

Fueki’s library was mainly kept on the first floor, but Haruto left his bag in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Belatedly, he noticed that it was the same room he and Chimera had used the last time they’d been in the house, but it was too late to remove the bag without it looking awkward. Chimera gave him an unreadable look anyway and followed suit.

“I’ll be back,” Chimera said at the bottom of the stairs.

Haruto, already searching for a light switch, stubbed his toe on the wall. “What?”

“I’ll be back,” Chimera repeated. “You don’t need me for this.”

“You have more experience with the history than I do,” Haruto said.

“I spent most of it sealed inside a mountain,” Chimera snapped, and yanked open the front door. Whatever had been used to seal it snapped off, taking part of the door frame with it. Chimera stalked out, leaving the door hanging unevenly behind him. Haruto tried to push it closed as best he could, finally managing to find a light switch.

The house was dusty, for all that no one had been in it, spider webs strung through the chandelier in the ceiling and across no few of the corners. Several drawers were half open and a chair was overturned, as if someone had been searching for something; Haruto righted the chair and closed the drawers. Whoever else might have been there wasn’t his concern at the moment. Fueki’s possessions, aside from the disorganization, appeared largely untouched, and Haruto started searching for information without really knowing what he was looking for.

Hours later, eyes burning, Haruto had to concede that his decision to simply start searching alone might have been an error. He hadn’t found anything useful, although he’d seen a great deal of Fueki’s notes and research on resurrection, and on how to use mana to reactivate a body and then resurrect a soul. Fueki hadn’t been satisfied with the doll Koyomi had been; he had wanted his daughter’s soul back. Haruto rubbed his eyes and wondered about the heart and soul of the Koyomi he had known; even if the doll Fueki had created hadn’t had his Koyomi’s soul, she had still had her own heart and personality, and Haruto had her soul in his pocket. Who was to say she wasn’t every bit as real as the girl who had died?

None of which was getting him any closer to figuring out if Fueki had seen half-born Phantoms trapped in the dead or undead bodies of their human hosts. Haruto stretched, and eyed the materials that specifically had to do with the Sabbath. He had avoided them, at first, for the memories of both times Fueki had chained him to an altar and attempted to drive him into despair.

“Yo,” Chimera said from behind him, and Haruto tried to climb the walls. He shoved his heart from his throat back into his chest where it belonged.

“Chimera,” he said, with dignity, as if he hadn’t just sent a chair skittering halfway across the room.

Chimera was far too amused for Haruto’s taste, pushing the chair back toward the table. “Did you find anything?” he said.

“Since Fueki has actual books instead of anything searchable, no.” Haruto crossed his arms and leaned against the table. He’d tried despite his expectations to see if Fueki had any sort of digital library, but there was nothing that he could find. Everything was analogue, making the process far more laborious than it by any rights had to be. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Chimera shrugged slightly. “For some definitions of the word,” he said, and refused to elaborate further. Haruto gave up, turning back to the stack of books he was starting to resent simply for existing as words printed on paper. The time he’d spent training with Fueki so long ago had told him exactly how the man had preferred to be organized, but that didn’t mean Haruto had to like it. “By the way,” Chimera added, before Haruto had gotten farther than opening a single cover.

“What?” Haruto asked absently. The volume in his hands had something to do with the Sabbath ritual, and he didn’t know if he hoped for or dreaded finding more detailed information on the creation of Phantoms.

“Mayu wants to talk to you,” Chimera said.

Haruto dropped the book.

“Hello, Haruto,” Mayu said, stepping out from behind Chimera. He hadn’t noticed her standing there, which was a fine lapse in observation.

“Uh,” he said. “Mayu.”

“Haruto,” she said. “It’s good to see you.” What she did not have to say was that it had been weeks, if not months, since he had sent so much as a text message to anyone at the antique shop. She’d sent him messages semi-regularly, but he hadn’t answered them.

“You too,” he said.

“What are you doing?” Mayu asked abruptly.

“I was hoping Fueki had information on an, uh, odd phenomenon,” Haruto said. “Not on it, specifically, but whether it’s happened before.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mayu said. “When are you coming home?”

“I.” Haruto couldn’t meet her eyes. “I can’t.”

“We ran across two Phantoms that failed to properly manifest,” Chimera said into the resulting silence, before anyone else could do more than draw breath. “They were trapped in their human hosts.”

“You saw more than one?” Mayu said sharply.

“More than one?” Haruto echoed. “You – what have you been doing?”

“What you haven’t,” Mayu snapped. She’d changed, in the past few months. The Mayu he’d left at the antique shop with the vague directive to keep everyone safe wouldn’t have taken that kind of tone with anyone she considered a friend. She drew a hand over her eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s late, and I’m tired, and we have a drive ahead of us.”

“We do?” Haruto said, and Chimera elbowed him in the ribs. Haruto capitulated; as much as he had wanted to avoid talking to the people who had also known Koyomi, guilt chewed at him now, and he couldn’t reject Mayu when she was staring him in the face. “Uh, yes, I mean. Let me.” He turned back to the stack of materials he hadn’t looked through. “Let me just put these in. Something.”

Mayu slipped a ring over her finger and activated a portal, sending the stacks Haruto indicated through it with an efficiency she hadn’t had when he left. She sent the laptop Haruto had only cursorily checked as well, power cord wrapped neatly around it. Haruto felt another twist of guilt that she had had to effectively hone her skills without direction or help. “Ready?” she asked.

“The rest of our stuff is upstairs,” Haruto said, but both of the bags they hadn’t unpacked were in the doorway. “Or they’re right there,” he said, resigned. He couldn’t stall any further, not without being more transparent than he already was.

The drive toward the antique shop was quiet, the roads mostly empty under the full moon. On the one hand, Haruto didn’t have to immediately face Mayu and the fact that he’d essentially abandoned her. On the other hand, he had plenty of time and silence to think about what he hadn’t done to fulfill the responsibilities he’d taken on of his own free will when he’d decided to become the Ringed Wizard in the first place. By the time they pulled up to the darkened shop, guilt and apprehension were a leaden weight in his stomach.

Mayu unlocked the door, holding it open for first Chimera and then for him. Haruto slipped automatically out of his shoes, walking in as if he’d never left, and then stopped. The furniture was exactly as he remembered it, although some of the stock had changed and the area where Wajima created the rings had expanded. Shunpei had decided to learn how to make rings, Haruto remembered. Neither of them were in the room, which was only lit with a single lamp.

“Your bedroom is still there,” Mayu said. “Chimera –“

“I sleep with Haruto,” Chimera said, showing her his teeth in an expression that in no way resembled a smile.

“I see,” Mayu said slowly. “We’ll see you in the morning, Haruto.” She vanished up the stairs. He thought briefly that there was nothing stopping him from simply walking out the door, except for the relationships he’d badly damaged by avoiding them for months, and knew that he wanted to fix what he could.

“It’s already morning,” Haruto muttered. It was well past midnight, and dawn was only a few hours away. It almost wasn’t worth sleeping, really, but Chimera was standing at the foot of the stairs with an expectant look, and Haruto found himself smiling despite the past few hours. Chimera shook his head slowly, his lips curling upwards at the corners, and Haruto followed him into the bedroom.

It was precisely as he remembered, too, but he paid no attention to it beyond making sure the door was firmly closed. Chimera proved every bit as distracting as Haruto had hoped he would be, driving away the guilt and apprehension and the leaden weight under his skin until there was nothing left but warmth and the pleasant fuzz of fatigue. Any energy he’d had before they’d started had deserted him with a vengeance, and he leaned into it when Chimera folded his arms around him.

Haruto meant to say _good night_ , but the words that slipped out instead were, “I love you.”

“Love,” Chimera said softly, and Haruto belatedly realized what he’d just said. He wasn’t in love with Chimera, couldn’t be in love with Chimera; he’d had a crush on Kosuke, but Kosuke was straight and dead, and the fact that Chimera was wearing Kosuke’s face had just confused him. Hadn’t it? He hadn’t been seeing the echoes of Kosuke in Chimera, though, not for a while. “You’re an interesting man, Soma Haruto,” Chimera said, and that wasn’t specifically a rejection, not when Chimera was holding him a little more closely than before.

Haruto let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and felt Chimera chuckle behind him. He relaxed in Chimera’s grip, against the Phantom’s human form, and Chimera began to gently stroke his forearm. Definitely not a rejection, then, Haruto thought, and barely heard Chimera telling him to go to sleep.


	5. House Of Cards

Chimera hadn’t planned on being present for whatever confrontation Soma’s friends had up their collective sleeves; despite having gotten mana from Soma, it was still looking forward to hunting for Gates. Not that it intended to let the Gates die, as Soma had been very clear that causing human death was unacceptable, but it needed more mana than it could get from Soma alone. Its plans were derailed by Mayu walking into the bedroom without so much as a by your leave.

“Stop hiding, Haruto,” she said.

As Soma was still asleep, he didn’t answer. Chimera, since the statement hadn’t been addressed to it, didn’t bother to answer either. It did, however, pull Soma slightly closer in a clearly possessive gesture and gave the intruder a level look. Whatever Mayu wanted, she had to understand that first and foremost, Soma belonged to Chimera.

Mayu blinked, looking from Soma to Chimera and back again. “So that’s what you meant,” she said, this time clearly speaking to Chimera despite looking at Soma with an expression that Chimera did not like. There were shades of judgment underlaid with worry, as if Mayu actively disapproved of what Chimera and Soma were doing and thought it was going to damage Soma on top of it. Chimera decided it had gotten better at reading human expressions in the time it had spent with Soma, and then that Mayu deserved an answer to the question she hadn’t technically asked.

It gave her the smallest of grins, barely showing its teeth. “Yes,” it said.

“I can hear both of you,” Soma said, less dead to the world than previously assumed and leading Chimera to wonder if he was adjusting to having his mana drained on a regular basis. “Good morning, Mayu.”

“Don’t you good-morning-Mayu me,” she said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Soma appeared to consider the question for a moment. “Getting up?” he hazarded, but he pulled the sheet more closely around himself. The faded remnants of Kosuke’s memory told Chimera that it had something to do with nakedness in front of the opposite sex, as if it mattered. Soma was Chimera’s; it didn’t matter who else saw him.

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it,” Mayu said, a note of bitterness in her voice. She closed the door, leaning on the wall next to it. “You left,” she said, her voice breaking just slightly.

“I know,” Soma said. Neither of them appeared to remember that Chimera was in the room, and Soma had him all but pinned to the bed by the simple measure of lying half on top of him. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry.” Mayu looked down. “Do you know what I’ve been doing, for the past three months?”

Soma shook his head.

“Rinko and I have been hunting the leftover Phantoms.” It didn’t escape Chimera’s notice that Mayu left off any honorific when naming the cop who’d helped Soma the previous year, but more importantly, the wizard had just given him a valuable piece of information. Chimera thought briefly that Soma’s little road trip had been even more ill-advised than it had seemed, but without the road trip, Soma wouldn’t belong so undeniably to him – to it, Chimera corrected itself.

“There are leftover Phantoms?” Soma sounded horrified, and guilty. It was unpleasant to hear. Chimera shifted, trying to move Soma a little closer to it, but Soma was pulling away. He nearly stood before remembering what he wasn’t wearing, and settled for sitting on the edge of the bed with half the sheet wrapped around his waist. “I didn’t even think – Mayu, I’m so sorry.”

“I tried to tell you,” Mayu said. “You never picked up the phone.”

“I know.” Soma, for all that his body language was directed toward Mayu, still wasn’t looking her in the eyes. “But Koyomi…”

“Haruto, Koyomi is gone. The rest of us are still here.” Mayu clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I know how you felt – feel about her.”

Soma shook his head slowly. “You’re not… you’re not wrong.”

“It was still tactless,” Mayu said. “And I’m still sorry I said it like that. But we needed you, too.”

“The Phantoms,” Soma started.

“Not just the Phantoms!” Mayu pushed off the wall, flinging her arms upwards. “It’s not just that we – I needed your help and you weren’t there! Haruto, you idiot, we were worried about you!”

“Oh.” Soma twisted his hands around in the sheet in his lap, dragging the edge perilously close to slipping right off. Chimera eyed it with interest. “I wasn’t alone,” he offered.

“Haruto.” Mayu squeezed her eyes shut. The gesture didn’t seem to quite convey whatever she was aiming for, and she buried her face in her hands for a moment. “Haruto,” she said again. “Chimera is a Phantom. Chimera doesn’t count. Chimera would most likely eat you as soon as protect you, and are you really trying to tell me I should be giving you more leeway because you’re totally fine, you have a monster on your side?” She looked over Haruto’s shoulder and her eyes widened, apparently remembering that Chimera was in the room. It gave her a jaunty little wave with one hand. “I mean,” she said, and then nothing. “No offense,” she muttered finally.

Chimera laughed soundlessly, letting her see its teeth without breaking eye contact. She wasn’t exactly wrong on any count, and it couldn’t get upset over the truth.

Soma, for his part, didn’t appear to notice the byplay; he was staring at Mayu, trying to meet her eyes for the first time since she’d come in the room. “I,” he said, and then squared his shoulders. “I dropped the ball,” he said. “I let all of you down. Mayu, I’m sorry.” The earnestness in his voice was one of the things that Chimera loved about Soma, his ability to put his heart and soul into whatever he was doing.

“Yeah, well, it’s not just me you have to apologize to,” Mayu said, and then tentatively, “Are you leaving again?”

“Not for a while,” Soma said, which was excellent news to Chimera as well. “I’ll be downstairs in a few minutes.”

“Shunpei made breakfast,” Mayu said. “That was a few hours ago, though.”

“I’ll make lunch?” Soma offered.

“Haruto,” Mayu said, exasperated but with a note of warmth to it, “we all know you’re a terrible cook. Stay out of the kitchen.”

“I’m not that bad,” Soma muttered, and Chimera took pity on Mayu in a bid to get her out of the room as quickly as possible.

“Yes, you are,” it said, leaning over to drop a kiss on Soma’s cheek. Soma was startled enough to leap to his feet, forgetting the sheet entirely, which led to Mayu vanishing adroitly out of the door and slamming behind her. Soma was left standing in the middle of the room, gloriously nude, looking from the door to Chimera in rapid succession.

“I’m not,” he muttered finally, searching for his clothes.

Chimera contented itself with simply watching, which unaccountably made Soma blush, even after all this time. Definitely interesting. Chimera grinned at him, which had the effect of making Soma move faster.

“You’re not getting out of this,” Soma said, stabbing a finger toward him. “Put your clothes on. You’re coming with me.”

“As moral support?” Chimera said, testing the words.

“Yes. Exactly. Moral support.”

Chimera had been under the impression that Soma had already had the difficult part of the conversation his friends expected, which explained nothing about his current state of nerves. It shrugged and lazily climbed off the bed to find its clothes. It no longer dressed like Kosuke, not after three months of being the sole inhabitant of his body, instead wearing the simplest possible combinations of clothing.

As a result, despite Soma having a head start, Chimera was fully dressed first.

“You’re going to freeze,” Soma said, looking him up and down.

Chimera looked down at itself. It had on a perfectly respectable pair of jeans, Kosuke’s boots, and a t-shirt. It had even remembered socks and underwear, which had been easy to forget for the first few weeks. “No, I’m not,” it said. “I tolerate a much wider range of temperature than you do, Soma Haruto, even if I’m trapped in a human body.”

Soma threw a long-sleeved shirt at him, pleasingly soft and fuzzy but with a distressing blocky and colorful pattern. “Really?” Chimera said.

“Looks good on you,” Soma said. “Especially since your hair is still brown.”

Chimera paused in the act of pulling on the shirt. “Is it supposed to be another color?”

Soma laughed a little. “Nitoh dyed it,” he said. “Wait, did you cut it? At all?”

This time, it was buttoning the shirt that was interrupted by Soma’s increasingly odd questions. “Why would I cut it?” Chimera asked. “Is there something wrong with it?” Come to think of it, Soma’s hair was darker than it had been, and longer.

Soma reached for Chimera’s head, bending it downward and searching through his hair. Chimera permitted it for a few seconds before moving out of Soma’s grasp. “It isn’t growing,” Soma said, sounding mystified.

“Is it supposed to?”

“You – yes.” Soma ran a hand through his own hair, which had the effect of making it stand up in odd places, and grimaced. “Yes, it is.” He eyed Chimera again, and it took a few moments for Chimera to figure out that Soma was looking at his hands. “Your fingernails,” he started.

“There is nothing wrong with my fingernails,” Chimera said. “Same length they’ve – they’re supposed to grow, too, aren’t they.” It sighed, resigned. “Humans are odd, Soma Haruto.”

“No, that’s very interesting.” Soma looked like he wanted to reach for Chimera’s hands. Chimera moved prudently out of arm’s length.

“Aren’t you supposed to be going downstairs?” Chimera prodded. It had no particular desire to be part of whatever emotional confrontation was coming next, given how the last one had been rather awkward, but it also had no desire to have its human body examined for flaws. Particularly when said flaws implied that it wasn’t necessarily alive after all, and when said examination was bringing him no closer to escaping the body.

“Downstairs.” The corners of Soma’s mouth turned down. “Right.” He looked Chimera up and down one more time. “I guess that’s okay,” he said, and Chimera rolled its eyes. Soma had no room to talk; he’d put the WizarDriver on for the first time in weeks, if one didn’t count the instances in which he’d deliberately gone hunting Phantoms, and Chimera felt that it clashed with both his pants and his shirt. “What?”

Chimera gestured at the Driver. “That,” it said. “What gives?”

“What do you mean, what gives?” Soma looked down at the belt and its attendant transformation device.

“You haven’t been wearing that regularly,” Chimera said. “Only when you found something to kill.”

“That’s not – I mean,” Soma started, and shook his head. “This is supposed to be my job,” he said. “I’ve neglected it.”

“That little girl telling you something doesn’t make it true,” Chimera said, stretching. The fuzzy shirt, despite its awful aesthetic pattern, was incredibly comfortable, and he wondered if he could find one in a solid color.

“Mayu isn’t – I’m not going to argue with you about this,” Soma said. “Stop trying to stall. We have to go downstairs.”

“I’m not the one justifying picking up old habits,” Chimera said. “You’re the one who was all gung-ho about reconnecting with old friends and then started dragging your feet.”

“You’re still moral support,” Soma said. “Come on.”

The atmosphere on the first floor wasn’t exactly charged, but there was a slick indefinable sort of tension when Chimera followed Soma down the stairs. It took up a position behind Soma and to his left, traditionally his weaker side during a fight, although it couldn’t quite have said why it took that specific action. Soma’s friends were hardly likely to attack him physically.

“Welcome home, Haruto,” said old man Wajima, and some of the tension melted away. He ignored Chimera entirely, though, which was fine by Chimera. Shunpei nudged Wajima, and the old man glanced to the side before acknowledging Chimera. “You may stay as long as Haruto is here,” Wajima said.

“Sir,” Shunpei hissed. The odd form of address threw Chimera for a moment until he remembered again that the teenager had attached himself to Wajima as a student, which meant he was showing respect to his mentor. Wajima regarded Shunpei stolidly for a moment, declining to say anything else. “I’m glad you’re here,” Shunpei said. “Both of you.”

“Thank you,” Soma said. “I know, uh.” He coughed, covering a barely audible break in his voice. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

Mayu, seated on the couch in what Chimera remembered was Soma’s usual spot, shifted positions ostentatiously enough to make a very noticeable sound.

“If it’s all right,” Soma continued, sounding oddly diffident, “I’m not going anywhere for a while. Mayu has been handling leftover Phantoms, and I’d like to help her with the remainder of that task.”

“You can _have_ it if you want it,” Mayu said. “Or I’ll help you.”

“Mayu’s starting college!” Shunpei blurted out, face split in a huge grin. “In March! She passed her entrance exams and everything!”

“Shunpei!” Mayu said, sounding as if she very much wanted to be annoyed but couldn’t quite manage it.

“I couldn’t help it!” Shunpei waved his hands in front of himself defensively. “I’m just – it’s so wonderful that you’re going. Not that she’s going far,” he said to Soma. “She’s still staying here.”

“That’s wonderful,” Soma said to Mayu. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Mayu said, halfway between demure and fiercely proud. It was an odd look on her, a sense of false modesty that didn’t fit what Chimera had seen of her over the past day.

“Oh, and there’s this!” Shunpei vanished into the back of the shop.

“Perhaps we should wait,” Wajima said, but the exhortation fell on deaf ears. Shunpei re-emerged waving an innocuous-looking ring carved of yellow stone with silver engraving. Chimera eyed it; it looked similar to nearly every other ring Soma used, with the engraving in the stylized shape of a dragon. “Shunpei,” Wajima said, and sighed. “Perhaps we should let Mayu test it.”

“But,” Shunpei said, face falling slightly.

“It’s all right,” Mayu said quickly. “I know how much you wanted Haruto to test the first one.”

Soma looked between the three of them, a smile slowly spreading across his face. “Shunpei, you made a ring!”

“Three,” Shunpei said. “Though the second one doesn’t do much of anything useful. But I wanted you to be the first one to use the first one I made. Because. You know.’

“I would be honored,” Soma said, and if Chimera hadn’t known better, he would have said Soma was absolutely sincere. He might even have been partly sincere; as far as Chimera could tell, his joy in his friends’ accomplishments was genuine. But he had been so focused on his memories of Koyomi and finding an appropriate place for her soul to sleep that Chimera doubted anything else carried a significant amount of weight. “Do you have any idea what it does?” Soma was asking.

“Um.” Shunpei rubbed the back of his head. “Not really.”

“That’s okay,” Soma said, with another smile. This one included Wajima as well. “That’s usually how it goes.”

“I was trying to put good thoughts into it,” Shunpei said. “I know that’s not how the process works, but I wanted it to be something nice.”

“I’m sure it will be,” Soma said, and slipped the new ring on his finger. The Driver around his waist looked somehow more natural here than it had in the bedroom, as if Soma were more comfortable wearing it or was at least pretending that he was. Chimera sprawled in a chair opposite Mayu’s seat on the couch and tilted its head to the side to watch what – given what it knew about Shunpei – was sure to be a disaster.

Soma flipped the lever to switch the Driver’s mode, and the standby chant echoed through the shop. Surreptitiously taking a deep breath, Soma scanned the ring. Chimera made a brief internal wager as to whether or not the ring would work at all, but the Driver successfully read it and announced its name.

 _Joy Please!_ the Driver called. Chimera sat up straighter.

From the angle where it had chosen to sit, Chimera couldn’t quite see Soma’s face. Even so, it could see that as soon as Joy had successfully scanned, Soma had changed significantly. His body language was looser, as if a great weight had fallen off his shoulders and he was subsequently barely tethered to the ground. Chimera didn’t like it, even before Soma stepped up to Shunpei and wrapped his arms around him without warning.

Shunpei, being Shunpei, hugged him back. Soma said something quietly into Shunpei’s ear, not meant for the rest of the room, but Chimera heard it anyway. Soma was thanking Shunpei for an amazing gift, and Shunpei’s face lit up. Soma let go of his friend, squeezing his upper arms one last time before drawing away, and his gaze fell on Wajima. Chimera still couldn’t see Soma’s face, but the last remnants of chill Wajima had been harboring melted under whatever expression Soma had, and Soma hugged him, too.

Whatever Soma said to Wajima, Chimera couldn’t hear it. Wajima stiffened, though, pulling away from Soma with a worried look. “Are you sure?” he said.

“Yes,” Soma said. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

Wajima nodded abruptly, and gave Chimera a resigned look. “It’s not that I don’t trust your judgment, Haruto,” he said quietly. “But I have reservations.”

“I understand,” Soma said. “It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

Chimera frowned at both of them, pushing the hair out of his eyes. It didn’t bother him, normally, but for some reason, today it felt wrong. He’d barely recognized the minor sense of dissonance for what it was when it was pushed out of his mind by Soma turning around so that Chimera could finally see his face. He was smiling, brilliant and utterly empty, face blank despite its nominal configuration into what should have been an expression of joy. Chimera couldn’t help it; he recoiled without thinking.

Out of the corner of its eye, Chimera saw Mayu’s reaction. She smiled back, body language warm and welcoming, while Chimera tried to push farther back into its chair. The chair toppled over, spilling Chimera onto the floor. It rolled and came up on its feet, the hair on the back of its neck standing on end. Everyone in the room was staring at it with identical expressions of surprise, except for Soma. Soma’s face was still empty, for all that it was arranged in what should have been an expression of warmth.

Chimera stepped backward without thinking about it, carefully circling around until it had the door at its back.

“What’s wrong?” Soma asked. The awful smile had faded somewhat, but it was still tugging on Soma’s features.

Chimera shook its head. “Take it off,” it said.

Soma finally frowned, tilting his head to the side. “Why?” he asked, and then repeated, “What’s wrong?” He stepped closer to Chimera, trapping it between against the door. Chimera couldn’t open the door, not when the door opened inwards and it was pressed against the infernal thing. Its only option was to physically remove the ring from Soma’s hand.

“It’s all wrong,” Chimera growled.

“I haven’t felt like this in – in months,” Soma said. “Years. Not since before my parents died.”

Chimera reached for Soma’s hand, not trying to be stealthy about it in the slightest. Soma avoided it gracefully, moving lightly and as if he hadn’t noticed Chimera’s movements at all. He circled around and laid his hands on Chimera’s shoulders. He seemed taller, standing as relaxed as he was, and Chimera couldn’t suppress the feeling of looking up even though it knew Kosuke and Soma were the same height.

“I meant what I said,” Soma murmured, too quietly for anyone else to have heard, even if their hearing was enhanced the way Chimera’s was. “Last night. I love you, and I’m not afraid to say it any more.”

“That isn’t love,” Chimera snarled, not bothering to keep its voice down. “That thing is affecting your judgment.”

“I feel happy,” Soma said softly, stepping closer and pressing his lips to Chimera’s jaw, just below where it met Chimera’s ear. The familiar gesture felt obscene. Chimera flattened itself against the door, but it couldn’t move any farther away. Over Soma’s shoulder, it could see Soma’s friends – his found family – watching with varying degrees of shock. Wajima wasn’t looking at them at all, while Shunpei’s mouth was literally hanging open.

Mayu locked eyes with Chimera when it looked at her, expression full of intensity as though she were trying very hard to convey something important. Chimera had no idea what; it was too busy trying not to crawl out of its skin as Soma leaned against it. Soma’s heart hammered madly against Chimera’s chest, rhythm rapid and just slightly uneven, adding to the sense of wrongness.

“That isn’t happiness,” Chimera said, and pushed Soma away.

Soma tripped and went sprawling, hands spread wide, and Chimera seized its opportunity. The Joy ring slipped off his finger easily, and Soma gasped in a ragged breath of air. His shoulders bowed inward, the emptiness draining out of his face to leave desperate longing behind. It lasted barely half a second before he slammed a mask of indifference over it, but Chimera had seen it.

“That,” Soma said finally, still sitting on the floor. “That was remarkable.” He sounded out of breath. Chimera unobtrusively moved the ring out of his reach, and Soma pushed to his feet without looking at anyone else. “I need some air,” he said to no one in particular and vanished quickly enough that the door failed to close properly in his wake.

Chimera stood slowly, looking at the ring. It could see now that the stylized dragon was smiling, wearing the same empty expression as Soma had been. It was a remarkable piece of craftsmanship, to pack such an eerie expression so clearly with so few lines. Chimera tried to crush it in its fist.

“Here, now,” Mayu said, rescuing the ring. Chimera hadn’t even managed to dent it, although a mark was already blossoming in its fragile human palm. Mayu handed the ring off to Shunpei and ran her fingers gently over Chimera’s borrowed skin, probing carefully at the bone beneath. Chimera hissed in pain and tried to pull its hand away, but Mayu’s grip was surprisingly strong. “Let’s put some ice on that,” Mayu said.

“I’m sorry?” Shunpei said, looking quizzically at Chimera.

“Later,” Mayu said, guiding Chimera into the kitchen. Chimera cast a glance over its shoulder at the still-open door. “Give him a few minutes,” Mayu said, as if she knew Soma better than Chimera did. It had to concede that she wasn’t wrong, though, and the ice pack felt good on its now throbbing palm.

“You saw it, right?” Chimera said, keeping its voice low.

“Saw what?” Mayu asked. She sighed, rearranging the towel around the ice pack. “I believe that you don’t want to harm Haruto,” she said carefully, as if choosing each word deliberately.

“That – that _ring_ is harmful,” Chimera said. It couldn’t say exactly why Soma’s empty face had unsettled it so much, only that the influence of the ring had smothered every trace of Soma.

“I haven’t ever seen him look so happy,” Mayu said. She tied off the ends of the towel, holding the ice tightly against Chimera’s borrowed palm.

“It didn’t look like Soma Haruto,” Chimera said. “It was wearing his skin, but that wasn’t him.”

“You’re being melodramatic,” Mayu said tartly.

Chimera snorted in derision and left the kitchen. Someone had shut the front door while Chimera had been failing to make Mayu see reason, and it left the door hanging open again as it went to find Soma before he did something unadvisable.

Soma hadn’t gone far; he was just around the side of the shop, staring moodily at his bike. It was dusty from the trip the night before, and Soma reached out to pull a leaf out from underneath the headlight before he saw Chimera watching.

“Do you want something?” he asked, clearly not wanting company.

Chimera shrugged, wandering over to the bike and tugging on the leaf Soma hadn’t touched. It crumbled under his fingers, and he rubbed the dust against his thigh. Soma watched him, looking more annoyed than anything else, and Chimera circled the bike. There was a twig caught in the rear taillight, which must have been there since they’d taken the bike into the woods a thousand kilometers away. It was wedged in tightly enough that Chimera needed both hands to dig it out, and when he looked up, Soma was frowning at him.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Nothing.” Chimera bent the twig in half, the dry wood snapping cleanly under very little stress, and then again, dropping the pieces to the ground.

Soma sighed, drawing both hands over his face. “Could you give me some time alone?” he said.

“No,” Chimera returned, leaning carefully on the bike and deliberately misinterpreting Soma’s words. “You’re far too interesting to leave alone.”

“That’s not what I – _Chimera_.” Soma folded his arms across his chest, looking like nothing so much as a sulky child. He was losing the edge of mania and despair that he’d worn when he’d fled the antique shop, body language shading into annoyed resignation. “You know that’s not what I meant,” he said, finally.

Chimera showed his teeth in what wasn’t meant to be a smile, but Soma smiled at him anyway.

“Are you okay with staying here?” he asked, the question coming entirely out of left field as far as Chimera was concerned.

“Don’t know why I wouldn’t be,” Chimera said. It didn’t particularly care where it slept.

“Of course not,” Soma said. He approached the bike tentatively, as if trying to work out how to dislodge Chimera without actually touching it; Chimera didn’t feel like making it easy, which resulted in a somewhat awkward dance that left Soma pressed up against Chimera’s side. “I was going to go for a ride,” Soma said eventually.

Chimera left his arm where it was, comfortably draped over Soma’s shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked abruptly. The question wasn’t quite motivated by wanting Soma in working order to fix Chimera’s problem; he found that he actually cared about the answer. It was an odd sensation, similar but not quite the same as the sense of camaraderie he’d developed for Kosuke.

Soma went suddenly tense, and Chimera glanced over. Soma was looking at him suspiciously.

“What?” Chimera said, and it came out more defensively than he’d intended.

“Thank you,” Soma said, squeezing Chimera into a quick hug that somehow turned into Soma inserting himself between Chimera and the bike and leaving Soma free to climb onto said bike. “I’ll see you later,” he added, and drove off without actually answering the question.

The ice was starting to numb Chimera’s hand; it pulled the now-sodden towel away, looking speculatively at the road in the direction Soma had gone, and prodded mentally at the fact that it had actually wanted an answer. At some point over the past few months, Soma had wormed his way into Chimera’s regard, and Chimera would be put out if something happened to him. Soma’s little half-asleep declaration the night before had nothing to do with it, Chimera wanted to tell itself, but it had to admit that it had liked hearing the words.

“This is ridiculous,” it said, squeezing the towel. The cold water stung against its bruised palm, and it grimaced before dropping the towel on the ground and mounting its own bike. It had intended to hunt immature Gates, but that was before Mayu had casually announced that there were still Phantoms running around.

The little PlaMonster Nitoh had occasionally used came when summoned, circling Chimera once before flying off in search of some sort of disturbance, while Chimera went in another direction to see what could be found.

Despite Mayu’s statements, Chimera found nothing but frustration; there was no sign of any Phantoms at all, nothing it could sense either on its own or with the Green Griffin, and it also failed to run into Soma at any point. The city was teeming with people, all going about their individual business with the stolid security of a population that knew it wasn’t going to fall prey to monsters despite the events of the previous year.

Chimera ended up on a bridge, bike parked on the walkway, leaning over the railing. The Griffin wobbled back, commanded to return once it had neared the end of its energy. It folded in on itself and Chimera stored it away again for recharging, but of course it would charge on Chimera’s own energy and just deplete Chimera’s limited mana stores further. It thought about slipping out of Nitoh’s body as far as it could to find an immature Gate instead of a Phantom, but knowing that it could find a Phantom instead made it oddly reluctant to hunt Gates.

 _It’s not like the Gate would be harmed in the process_ , it argued with itself; Soma wasn’t damaged by repeated mana drains, after all. _Or not much._ It occurred to Chimera that it hadn’t stuck around after draining any of the immature Gates it had hunted along Haruto’s road trip to see what might happen to any of them, and it therefore did not actually have verifiable data regarding its assumptions. That it was vaguely disquieted by this realization it blamed entirely on Soma and his sensitivities, Chimera eventually decided.

The sun had dropped below the horizon and the air had gotten chilly enough that Chimera was gathering odd looks from passersby before it returned to the antique shop, but it was finding that it enjoyed the cold. It hadn’t had much of an opportunity to experience weather, not when its true body was all but impervious to changing temperatures and had been sealed for centuries, and it was a little surprised to find out that it actually had a preference. Chimera flexed its borrowed fingers, feeling the cold air against its warm skin, and wandered into the antique shop without looking up.

“Where’s Haruto?” it heard Shunpei ask.

“How should I know?” It lowered its hands and looked around. Mayu had gone, at some point, and the only two people in the room were Wajima and Shunpei. Chimera wondered distantly how the shop managed to stay open without any actual customers in it, but Shunpei was now wearing a distressed expression and not quite wringing his hands.

“Weren’t you with him?” Shunpei asked.

“No?” Chimera said. “Soma doesn’t need a babysitter,” it clarified, because Shunpei wasn’t looking reassured in the slightest.

“He’s not answering his phone,” Shunpei mumbled, perhaps not understanding that Soma not answering a phone call was definitely not a sign of trouble. Half the time he didn’t appear to remember that he had a cell phone.

Shunpei hadn’t been asking a question, though, which meant that Chimera wasn’t required to give a response. It wandered through the shop, absently picking up and examining the various bits and pieces of kitsch that had been collected and were ostensibly part of the shop’s inventory. It could feel Wajima’s eyes tracking it, and without meaning to, it began to move like a predator.

“Shunpei,” Wajima said sharply, and Chimera suppressed a flinch at the sudden sound. It had been nearly utterly silent in the shop, except for Shunpei slowly backing away, and Chimera flicked its gaze over to the teenager to see him behaving like prey.

Chimera grinned at Shunpei, just to see what he would do; Shunpei paled noticeably and slowly retreated to where Wajima stood without taking his eyes off Chimera. Chimera relaxed its stance, standing up straight and without either aggression or submission, letting its face go blank. Shunpei sidled around Wajima, vanishing into the area of the shop reserved for crafting the rings that Soma used, and Chimera turned its gaze to the old man.

“Your actions will have consequences, as long as you are under my roof,” Wajima said. The words weren’t a threat, merely a statement, filled only with quiet confidence. Wajima had nothing of submission in his stance, either, simply a certainty that he was in the heart of his territory. Chimera regarded him thoughtfully, tilting its head to the side. The old man had no basis for such surety, particularly given the less than subtle hostility he’d been displaying toward Chimera, but he was part of Soma’s found family.

“I do what I please,” Chimera said, flicking a finger lightly against something that looked delicate and rocking it on its stand. The little ornament wobbled and then steadied, no worse for the wear, but Wajima had come down firmly on the side of antagonist as far as Chimera was concerned.

“Causing Haruto pain will have consequences whether you’re under my roof or not,” Wajima said, not having backed down in the slightest during Chimera’s miniature power play.

“Why would I cause him pain?” Chimera said, pacing slowly around the shelf until it was no longer between it and Wajima. “He’s the only one of you I actually like.”

Wajima blinked suddenly, the overt air of hostility easing sharply. “In that case, you’re welcome as long as he’s here,” he said, but it had distinctly less of a reluctant overtone than when he’d said the same phrase several hours before. “Try not to break anything.” He turned his back on Chimera and followed Shunpei’s route into the back of the shop.

Chimera stared after him, not entirely sure what had just happened. Or – it knew that Wajima was less likely to try to murder it in its sleep, but it wasn’t clear on the why. It hadn’t said anything out of the ordinary, and it was fairly sure that telling the old man that it essentially actively disliked all of them was insulting. It shook its head and went to make tea. Kosuke had liked tea, and Chimera sometimes found it soothing in the face of aggravating confusion.

Shunpei had migrated into the kitchen ahead of him, and Chimera recognized the odd scent as an attempt to make dinner; it had needed the visual cue to identify what it was smelling as edible. Shunpei looked at it with wide eyes, still acting like prey even though Chimera wasn’t actively trying to move like a predator, and actually flinching when Chimera started rummaging in the cupboards for tea.

“I’m not going to eat you,” Chimera said. It could have, given that Shunpei’s status as a Gate meant that he was capable of generating mana. Out of curiosity, Chimera laid a hand on the back of Shunpei’s neck; the contact sharpened its perceptions, and it could tell that the Phantom Shunpei might have generated had been destroyed.

“What are you doing?” Shunpei said, voice only wavering a little.

“Soma Haruto killed your Phantom,” Chimera said, pulling its hand away. “Even if I wanted to eat you, there’s nothing appetizing there.” It deliberately did not mention that it could still siphon off the mana that Shunpei was generating and dissipating; without having suppressed his own Phantom, Shunpei would never learn to direct his mana, nor would he be able to generate significant amounts of it, but it did seem like a waste that what little there was didn’t get to be put to use.

The statement, despite Chimera’s tact, did not appear to make Shunpei feel any better, if his expression was any indication. Chimera ignored him and made the tea around Shunpei’s initial immobility and his subsequent hesitant attempts to continue cooking, sending Soma a questioning text almost as an afterthought while waiting for the water to boil. It finally withdrew from the kitchen, tea in hand, to claim Soma’s spot on the couch. It wasn’t a particularly comfortable couch, but Chimera drew up its feet to sit crosslegged around the hot cup of tea. The heat contrasted with the vague chill of the air was just as enjoyable as the cold wind it had felt while driving, and it caught itself thinking that staying in Kosuke’s body was perhaps not the horrifying fate it had first assumed.

Chimera narrowed its eyes at nothing in particular; it was getting complacent, if it was starting to feel that being locked in a human body was any sort of acceptable, and it was fast approaching time for Soma to hold up his end of the bargain. Or at least, the end of the bargain that didn’t involve providing a steady supply of mana. The tea grew cold in Chimera’s borrowed hands as it sat quietly, running through the now-familiar tangle of threads binding it to Kosuke’s body over and over, looking for a weak point that didn’t seem to exist.


	6. Am I Wrong

Haruto was freezing, in the too-light jacket that he’d been wearing inside. He’d been too upset to get something heavier on the way out the door, and then Chimera had been solicitously distracting enough that Haruto had just needed to get away. He hadn’t thought about the cold while standing still in the sunlight, and it wasn’t until his fingers were nearly frozen that he’d regretted not having at least a pair of gloves.

The city spread out below him as he stood with his back to the stone garden where Fueki had tried to return Koyomi’s soul. Haruto had wondered, since then, whether success on Fueki’s part would have essentially meant the death of the Koyomi that he knew; she had been an animated magical construct in the shape of Fueki’s daughter, without the original Koyomi’s soul or memories. Haruto had never known the original Koyomi, and it was his friend whose essence he carried with him. Had his Koyomi met the soul of the original, in some sort of afterlife, Haruto had also occasionally wondered.

It hurt, letting his thoughts go over what-might-have-beens and how Fueki hadn’t thought of Haruto’s friend as a real person, but Haruto couldn’t stop himself from probing at the thoughts. He knew that were Koyomi there, she would have told him to stop being ridiculous. But of course, if Koyomi had been there, he wouldn’t be thinking about how her father didn’t acknowledge her existence, in that he wanted the soul of his daughter rather than the doll that he’d created.

Obscene, that’s what it was; what Fueki had done was obscene. His failed attempt at a resurrection had been an act of creation, even rooted in the utter destruction of the first Sabbath, and for him to disregard it was selfishness and inhumanity of the highest order. _Or that might be a little bit of an exaggeration_ , Haruto told himself, and stepped away from the edge of the cliff. He settled at the base of a column, below the manacles still hanging half-open from the day of the second Sabbath.

“That’s not what you’re really upset about,” he said, quietly enough that any passersby – not that he expected any – wouldn’t be able to hear, and hugged his knees against his chest. It was a little warmer, that way, and he tucked his fingers into the space behind his calves. They tingled a little, as some of the chill receded, and he dropped his head forward.

The Joy ring, Shunpei’s attempt at creating happiness, had been horribly wrong; Haruto could see it now, at the remove of several hours and the cold wind driving at nearly every inch of his body. He’d felt light, when he put it on, and the relief at not having to carry the weight of pain had been so great that he hadn’t had room for anything else. When Chimera had pulled it off his finger, the crushing burden of reality had almost been too much. He hadn’t been able to breathe, under the responsibility of laying Koyomi to rest and getting Chimera out of Nitoh’s body and the prospect of living without Koyomi or even a facsimile of Nitoh, and even the prospect of going on without Chimera.

Haruto curled more tightly around himself, breathing as deeply and evenly as he could against the memory of everything pouring over him at once. Wearing the ring, though, would have gone worse very quickly; he hadn’t _cared_. He’d felt a momentary burst of warmth for his friends, but it hadn’t been able to sustain itself in the face of the relentless barrage from the ring. He hadn’t been able to see it at the time, but it was all too clear now.

Shunpei had tried so hard, too; Haruto was going to have to find some way to encourage him to keep working while at the same time making sure he never made anything in that vein again. Maybe Wajima could help with that, Haruto thought, and the added responsibility eased slightly. Shunpei was a good ally and a better friend, and the last thing Haruto wanted was to cause him distress.

“Pity he hadn’t made that while Fueki was still alive,” Haruto muttered into his jeans. If he could have put that on Fueki’s finger, it would have neutralized him quite effectively.

The phone in his pocket buzzed again, and Haruto reluctantly pulled it out. He didn’t get to it before the call went to voice mail, but the lock screen cheerfully informed him that he had six missed calls and twelve text messages, and he felt that all of it was overkill. The most recent call wasn’t from anyone at the shop, though, it was from Rinko. Haruto frowned.

None of the texts were from Rinko; they were mainly from Shunpei and Mayu, as were the rest of the missed calls, and they wanted to know where he’d gone. There was a single text from Chimera, consisting of a question mark. Haruto sighed, and called Rinko back.

“I hear you’re back in Tokyo,” Rinko said without preamble.

“It’s good to talk to you too,” Haruto said dryly.

“Has Mayu gotten you up to speed on the current situation?” Rinko asked, ignoring the statement entirely.

“Uh,” Haruto said. “Situation?”

“She’s been helping,” Rinko said. “At first it was just Phantoms, although I think we’ve – well, mostly it’s been Mayu. Most of the Phantoms are gone; we’ve gone from a couple a week to one every two or three weeks, and the last one was almost a month ago.”

“That’s good,” Haruto said. None of what Rinko said sounded like it merited the phrase _the current situation_.

“Until this week, anyway,” Rinko said. “We’ve seen three Phantoms as of yesterday, including the weird one.”

The hair on the back of Haruto’s neck stood up. “The weird one?” he said carefully. Mayu had mentioned something about seeing _one of them_ , too, but he’d lost track of it in the chaos of coming home.

“When Mayu, uh, defeated it, it left behind a body,” Rinko said. Haruto could hear the tapping of a keyboard in the background. “Wakabayashi Kaneko. The name familiar to you?”

Haruto shook his head, remembered that Rinko couldn’t see him over the phone, and verbalized a negative.

“She is – was – a student at Todai.” Rinko paused and tapped at the keyboard again. “Studying agriculture. She was from Aichi, but she’s been living here for the past three years.”

Something sparked in the back of Haruto’s brain, but it wouldn’t come to the forefront. He left it alone; if he didn’t prod at it, he might be able to coax it into conscious thought. “What happened?” he asked.

Rinko blew out a frustrated breath. “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me. Mayu was just as surprised as I was when what we thought was a Phantom turned out to be a college student.”

“I’ve seen similar cases,” Haruto told her. “Twice. The Phantom didn’t properly separate from the Gate before maturing, but the Gate still died.”

“Wakabayashi wasn’t dead,” Rinko said. “At least, not until – the coroner couldn’t pin down a time of death.” Paper rustled in the background. “This was day before yesterday. Tuesday. He thinks she died sometime between Friday and Tuesday, and isn’t willing to commit to anything more specific. Wait, did you say you’ve seen this?”

“Twice,” Haruto said again. “I’ve been looking through Fueki’s library to see if there have been similar incidents in the past, but I haven’t had any luck so far.”

“Three times makes a pattern,” Rinko said. “Where?”

Haruto told her, adding that he’d known the second victim.

“The piano player?” Rinko sounded surprised, and saddened, and Haruto wished he hadn’t had to deliver bad news about someone with whom she’d been acquainted, if only briefly. “Damn. Who was the other one?”

“I have no idea.” The wind picked up and Haruto shivered.

“I didn’t know he’d come back to Japan,” Rinko said.

“He had a Tokyo address on his driver’s license,” Haruto said, and the same something pinged off the back of his brain, more strongly than before. It stubbornly refused to come into full view, and he gave up chasing after it.

“So what I wanted to talk to you about,” Rinko said, and Haruto twitched.

“That wasn’t it?” he said.

“What? No. I mean, yes, but not exactly. There’s more.” Rinko paused long enough for Haruto to hear the keyboard for a third time. He was starting to dislike the sound intensely. “Apparently Wakabayashi vanished a few weeks ago. There’s a missing person report, filed by her roommate, dated the 3rd. However, she was acting weird before disappearing. Wrecking things and denying she’d done it, pranks with odd lights that she’d also denied, and then she collapsed. When emergency services took her to a hospital, she was apparently just asleep.”

“That sounds like mana drain,” Haruto said slowly. “But she shouldn’t have been able to expend it without training and equipment, even if she was a Gate.”

“That’s the thing,” Rinko said. “Some of the lights described looked a lot like the portals Mayu uses. And you. She walked out of the hospital in the middle of the night, after she’d been admitted for observation, and no one saw her until, um. Yes.”

“Did the Phantom separate from her completely?” Haruto asked. He couldn’t dwell on the Gate’s death, or on the wasted potential on yet another of Fueki’s victims; he had to compartmentalize it into useful information if he wanted to prevent it from happening again.

“It did,” Rinko confirmed. “Just after we saw the body. Mayu destroyed it.”

“That matches what I saw.” Haruto dropped his forehead to his knees again. “I think you’re right about this being a pattern.”

“Can you…” Rinko trailed off.

“I don’t know. I need to look through the rest of Fueki’s archives, in case we’re not dealing with something entirely new.” A guilty pang went through him; the books and Fueki’s probably-useless laptop were back at the antique shop, but Haruto had completely forgotten about them in the face of his own personal problems.

“Keep me posted,” Rinko said, without a trace of condemnation; she just assumed he was doing everything he could. “I’ll let you know if we find another one.”

“Or I’ll let you know,” Haruto said. Better to prevent the abnormal Phantoms than just react to them though it was, he had no idea how to go about finding them before the Phantom started to break free. The very least he could do was go back to the antique shop and keep looking for clues in the past.

The drive back was colder than the drive out, but it didn’t occur to Haruto until he was nearly at the shop that he could have used Connect to pull a warmer jacket out of his closet. The cold had frozen his brain, he decided, and parked his bike next to Chimera’s. Blowing on his hands to warm them up, he walked the short distance around the shop to the front, but the scene visible through the rarely-opened curtains on either side of the door caught his attention.

Chimera was sitting cross-legged on the couch, staring into a cup of tea, while both Wajima and Shunpei cast wary glances at him from across the room. Mayu sat opposite Chimera, paging through what looked like one of Fueki’s books. Haruto tamped down the inexplicable rush of jealousy; she was doing what was supposed to be his job, and she was more conscientious about it than he had been. _It’s not like you’ve been around to help_ , he reminded himself, but all that did was bring the guilt back without dispelling the jealousy. Haruto took another few seconds to smooth out his expression before walking through the door.

“Welcome to – oh, you’re back,” Wajima said, immediately followed by, “What happened to your jacket?”

“Nothing,” Haruto muttered. He could feel how cold he was now that he was inside, and now that he was in something resembling a comfortable temperature, he started shivering. “I didn’t bring it.”

“Where did you go?” Shunpei didn’t quite drag him into the center of the room, but it was a close thing. Haruto shook him off. “We’ve been trying to call you for hours.”

“I was, uh.” He couldn’t say he’d been busy; all he’d been doing was try to get a handle on his own thoughts, which made him worse than useless. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Welcome back,” Mayu said absently, and pushed one of the books toward the couch. “Come help.”

“We saved you dinner,” Shunpei said helpfully, and Haruto escaped to the kitchen with a sense of relief. He couldn’t help but notice that Chimera hadn’t so much as looked at him the entire time, much less said anything. Haruto bit his lip, staring at the plate Shunpei had thoughtfully set aside. He didn’t feel like eating, although the vaguely hollow sensation through his middle told him he was probably hungry.

 _Stop causing trouble_ , he snapped at himself, and picked up the plate.

“Haruto,” Mayu said, from the living room, and he poked his head around the doorway. “When you have a minute,” she added. “You should eat first.”

The reminder from yet another person to meet his basic physical needs, as if he couldn’t do it on his own, made Haruto want to do precisely the opposite in a fit of pique, destroying the fragile sense of equilibrium he’d managed while talking to Rinko. He took a deep breath and ignored his irrational emotional response. It didn’t help that he could see that Mayu kept looking at him while he ate, and then looking away, and he ended up scraping the majority of what Shunpei had thoughtfully saved for him into the trash.

He’d gotten as far as cleaning and washing the plate, and was in the middle of drying it and his chopsticks when he felt rather than heard someone come into the kitchen. He glanced over his shoulder to see Chimera lounging in the doorway. “What is it?” he asked.

“I want out,” Chimera said.

“Out?” Haruto didn’t follow.

“Out,” Chimera repeated, and gestured at himself. “This is not acceptable.”

“I need more time.” Haruto finished drying the plate; his hands had finally warmed up in the hot water, but he still felt chilled down to the bone. “There are things going on.”

“There will always be something going on,” Chimera said, pacing closer. “There will always be another case, another Phantom, something else to fight. You made me a promise, and I intend for you to keep it.”

Haruto opened his mouth to tell Chimera that he’d work on getting Chimera out of Kosuke’s body as soon as he’d taken care of whatever was causing the abnormal Phantoms. What came out instead was, “I’ll miss you.” What was it about Chimera that kept twisting his words around? Haruto pressed his lips together, looking away from whatever reaction Chimera had, and tried again. “As soon as I can. As soon as we’ve figured out whatever is creating new Phantoms and stop it.”

“Miss me, or miss Nitoh Kosuke?” Chimera said, after several seconds of silence.

Haruto whipped his gaze back around, glaring at the Phantom possessing his dead friend’s body. “I meant you,” he ground out. “You know I’m not talking about Nitoh.”

Chimera crossed his arms, leaning against the door in a gesture so unlike Kosuke that Haruto almost couldn’t tell that he was wearing Kosuke’s face. “Are you really sure about that?” he said. “That you’re not just stalling because you miss your crush, and I’m the closest thing you can get?”

Haruto punched him in the jaw. He regretted it as soon as he did it, although not because of the action itself. The blow barely turned Chimera’s head, but it felt as though Haruto had broken every bone in his hand. He backed off, cradling the injured appendage. “That’s – I think we’re done here,” he said, and walked out of the room before he could say something else he regretted. “Mayu,” he said, and she took a long enough time to meet his eyes to make it clear that she’d heard every word. It wasn’t as if either of them had been trying to be quiet. “You wanted to talk to me about something?” he said.

“I, uh,” she stammered in an uncharacteristic display of uncertainty. “It can wait,” she said finally, and nudged a heavy volume toward him. “I could use some help, though.” As if it wasn’t his job to begin with.

Fueki’s archive made for a dry distraction, but at least he could pretend to concentrate on it and not talk to anyone. Haruto didn’t want to think about anything except the problem at hand, not when Chimera had finally demonstrated that it was capricious and inhuman and that it didn’t actually feel anything at all for anyone outside itself.

By the time Haruto was ready to call it a night, the living room had emptied and his hand had stiffened enough that moving it was painful. He closed the volume he’d failed to find anything useful in and went looking for something resembling ice. There was nothing, but a long soak in the bathtub during which he tried very hard not to think of anything at all loosened the muscles enough that he could at least bend his fingers. Nothing felt broken, he thought, and laughed that after a year of fighting Phantoms without serious injury, he could have broken his hand on a friend’s face.

That was if Chimera could even be considered a friend, Haruto thought dully, thoughts running free now that he was actively drying off and putting on his pajamas. He was more attached to Chimera than he’d thought he was, more than he wanted to admit, but he wouldn’t deliberately back out on their agreement, no matter what Chimera thought. Try to persuade Chimera to stay a while longer, maybe, but Haruto wouldn’t actively try to manipulate the Phantom. Chimera wasn’t in the bedroom when Haruto went in, and he had no idea where he had gone. He told himself he didn’t care, but it took him a long time to fall asleep.

Chimera remained largely absent for the next few days, surfacing only long enough to remind Haruto that he hadn’t vanished and that he still had expectations regarding the contract before going wherever it was that he went. The bike stayed in the little cul-de-sac next to the shop, not moving at all, and Haruto thought Chimera couldn’t be going far. He resolutely refused to dwell on what the Phantom was doing, reminding himself over and over again that Chimera wasn’t human and never had been, and that pining after him would only cause trouble.

It still hurt.

Haruto pored over Fueki’s archive as a distraction, searching through each volume for anything resembling the abnormal Phantoms both he and Mayu had encountered, but there was nothing. Most of the information seemed apocryphal at best, and there were some accounts that Haruto, after puzzling out the archaic language, doubted entirely. Mayu did no better, for her part, alternating between the laptop and the physical books.

“This is hopeless,” she said on the third day, closing a particularly heavy volume with a bang and dropping it on the floor. Haruto jumped, nearly dropping his own book. He’d nearly finished it, not that he’d found anything helpful. Every mention of creating a Phantom seemed to assume that the Gate died during the process and that was the end of it. “Didn’t he have his own notes?”

Haruto frowned. “Now that you mention it,” he said. There were a few lines scribbled here and there in the margins of some of the books, but there was a distinct lack of anything Fueki himself had written. Given what he’d been trying to do, there should have been an extensive set of notes somewhere. Although why Mayu thought they would be useful, he had no idea. “Did I miss something, back at the house?”

“If we’re going to look, it has to be today,” Mayu said. “It’s being torn down.”

“What, what?” Haruto did drop the book this time, and it narrowly missed his toes. “Why?”

Mayu shrugged. “No one to claim the property, so it’s been sold off.”

 _Of course_ , Haruto thought, but he still hated that there would be one less memory of Koyomi. “Let’s go, then,” he said, standing.

“What, now?” Despite her words, Mayu was on her feet almost before Haruto, and she beat him to the door. “Are you coming?” she asked.

Haruto remembered warmer clothing, and the two of them made good time moving out of the city. He was surprised when a third bike fell in behind him and he glanced over to see Chimera’s distinctive machine; Chimera himself wearing the usual inadequate amount of clothing. On the up side, Haruto told himself, Chimera was at least wearing a helmet. Mayu was much less sanguine, when she looked over at a stoplight, but Haruto motioned for her to just keep going. Despite looking very much like she wanted to argue, Mayu obeyed.

“So what are we doing out here?” Chimera asked brightly when all three of them had parked near what had been Fueki’s house. It hadn’t been touched, as far as Haruto could tell; he’d had a momentary flash of anxiety that everything inside of it would have been removed in preparation for demolition, but apparently not.

“Seeing if Fueki left notes,” Haruto said.

Chimera made a face and elected to wander toward the beach rather than join them in the house. Haruto watched him sit on what had to be freezing sand, stretching as though he were enjoying the summer sun rather than the dubious warmth of the tail end of December. With an unpleasant jolt, Haruto realized that it was nearly Christmas. There hadn’t been decorations in the shop, although if he thought about it, there had been displays of lights throughout the city. He just hadn’t paid attention.

“What?” Mayu asked, and he shook his head.

“Nothing. Let’s go inside.” If Fueki had had a set of notes, Haruto was forced to concede some time later, he’d hidden them well. There was nothing to be found. “Did he have anywhere else he, you know.” Haruto gestured. “Stored things.”

Mayu shook her head. “We were trained here. Or at least I was trained here.”

“Maybe he had some sort of base of operations as Wiseman,” Haruto said, but there was no one left alive who would have been able to answer where it might have been. He and Kosuke had been thorough in defeating Wiseman’s closest allies.

“Haruto,” Mayu said, sounding hesitant.

“Hm?” Haruto turned, not really paying attention through an attempt to reason out where Fueki might have situated his other base of operations.

“It’s about Chimera,” Mayu said, now past hesitant and deep into reluctant. Something about the tone finally pulled Haruto out of his rumination, and he blinked.

“What about Chimera?” he said.

“I know – I mean, you’re – it’s not really my – I’m worried,” Mayu said, the words tumbling over each other in a rush.

“He’s not going to rampage around, if that’s what you mean,” Haruto said, not sure what she was getting at. “He’s been patient for the last few months, he’s not going to start anything now. Not before we finish this.”

“What? No,” Mayu said, blinking. “I meant I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” Haruto said. It was even mostly true; he was fine, or he would be, because he had to be. No one else could do what he did, even if Mayu was improving in leaps and bounds. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I’m worried about the possible side effects,” Mayu said.

Haruto almost didn’t parse the sentence at first, it made so little sense. “The what?” he said, finally.

“Possible side effects,” Mayu said again, and when it still made no sense to Haruto, she elaborated. “Of the repeated mana drain.”

Haruto blinked. “It hasn’t happened that often,” he said, which was true. He hadn’t been in enough protracted fights, especially not since Fueki’s failed plans, not that Chimera had anything to do with it.

“Are you sure?” Mayu pressed, still inexplicably looking worried. “I know you trust him, but.”

Haruto began to think they were having two entirely different conversations. “Chimera?” he hazarded, and at Mayu’s nod, he frowned. “What does he have to do with anything?”

“I know you know what you’re doing,” Mayu said, hands up in defense, “but I’m just worried that he’s – I don’t want – if you’re okay with him draining your mana, then okay, but I just want you to know that I’m here for you as a friend.”

“Draining my – you think Chimera is feeding off me?” Haruto couldn’t stifle the urge to laugh; Mayu was so far off base that he could only find it funny. “That’s… that’s ridiculous.”

“You – you didn’t know?” Mayu sat down, burying her face in her hands. “Maybe I’m wrong,” she said, voice muffled. “But when I walked in on you that morning, I was so sure.”

Haruto opened his mouth to tell her Chimera was doing no such thing, but he suddenly wasn’t sure. He thought he would have known if Chimera was pulling energy out of him, would have felt the drain and the fatigue, and it occurred to him how well he slept every time he and Chimera were together. The implication was like a blow to the gut, made worse in that he couldn’t say with any certainty that Chimera _wouldn’t_ have drained his mana without his permission; Chimera might very well have interpreted it as his right under the terms of their contract. “I, uh, I need a minute,” he said.

Whatever reply Mayu might have made was cut off by the sound of a commotion outside. “The police?” she said instead; technically they were breaking and entering. It didn’t sound like law enforcement, though, not unless Rinko had failed to tell them that the police had been equipped with grenade launchers. Haruto dashed outside, grateful for the distraction, looking first for Chimera and second for the source of what he was almost sure had been an explosion.

Chimera was still on the beach, but he was no longer alone. A Phantom easily twice his size was advancing on him, and he was surrounded by chunks of rock and debris. Haruto didn’t think he was bleeding, but he didn’t pause to find out. He ran forward, pulling the Flame ring out of its customary place and scanning it across the WizarDriver. Mayu was right behind him, beige armor settling over her as she ran. Haruto had the same brief thought as always, the question of why her armor looked so different, before he put it aside.

The Phantom on the beach swung massive arms ending not in hands but in what looked like heavy stone disks at Chimera, and Chimera rolled out of the way just barely in time, ducking directly underneath the Phantom’s legs. A bolt of energy lanced out of his hands, catching the Phantom right below the waist, and Haruto heard Mayu choke.

“Did he hit it where I think he hit it?” she said.

Haruto started to smile in response, although she couldn’t see it under his armor, and then a violent wave of nausea ripped through him. He disengaged the transformation just barely in time, leaning against one of the stones and unable to focus on anything else. He was dimly aware of the fight in the background, Chimera dancing around the Phantom and beating it into the ground.

His physical distress told him that the Phantom fell into the non-standard category, but by the time Haruto regained any measure of control, it was too late to stop Chimera from killing it. The Phantom raised its arms, clearly nearly at the end of its rope, and made as if to bring its conjoined hands down to crush Chimera; Chimera, channeling Buffa, ducked under the Phantom’s blow and pushed off the sand to slam both feet into the Phantom’s chest. It fell, shaking the ground with a crash as its chest split open and a human body tumbled out.

The nausea abated suddenly enough to leave Haruto lightheaded; he pushed Chimera aside and ran forward. The Phantom’s form flickered in and out, half-present in a disorienting enough display to threaten to bring the nausea right back, and Haruto tried to ignore it. The man now lying on the beach wasn’t quite dead; he struggled weakly, trying to move away, eyes rolling in terror. Haruto skidded to a halt, dropping to his knees.

“It’s okay,” Haruto said, but the man was too far gone to listen. He just continued to thrash, limbs growing more sluggish and uncoordinated. “Don’t move,” Haruto said, trying to hold him still. Even he could tell that the former Gate was dying, and the struggle was just making it worse. “Chimera, give me the Joy ring.”

“I will not,” Chimera said, from outside the space created by the Phantom’s half-faded body.

“Now!” Haruto snapped without looking, and whatever tone he’d used seemed to work, because he felt the ring drop into his outstretched hand. Haruto slipped the ring on the Gate’s least-mangled finger, working it over the broken joint, and scanned the ring across his belt.

The effect was instantaneous; the Gate went from terrified to completely relaxed, and he looked at Haruto with something resembling sanity. The barest hint of a smile curved his ruined mouth, and he closed his hand around Haruto’s.

“It’s going to be all right,” Haruto said softly. He held the former Gate’s hand as the man died with some semblance of peace. It took him a moment after the former Gate’s chest had stilled to get himself under control again; when he thought he could speak without screaming, he removed the ring and flipped it toward Chimera. “We need to know who he was,” he said, and his voice barely wavered at all. Either the Phantom’s body had dissolved with its host’s death, this time, or Chimera had disposed of it, and Haruto did not want to know which one it was.

Mayu stepped forward, looking as upset as Haruto felt, and started going through what was left of the man’s pockets. Haruto couldn’t quite make himself do the same thing; he just stared at what had been a human being.

“I have an ID,” Mayu said. Haruto reached for it; the driver’s license – gold status, the Gate had been a conscientious driver – showed a Tokyo address, and a name. Haruto committed both to memory, wiped down the license and the wallet, and replaced them. Mayu frowned at him, and Haruto shook his head.

“We should call Rinko,” he said. His voice was thick in his throat, and it took him two tries to stand up. Chimera was watching him with an unreadable expression, soiled Joy ring still in his hand. When he saw Haruto looking, he paced over to the water and began rinsing the ring in the ocean. Haruto texted Rinko instead of calling, after looking at his phone for several seconds, and then left the remains of the Gate on the beach without looking to see if Chimera and Mayu were following.

Haruto didn’t want to talk to either one of them, using the acquisition of a glass of water as a pretext to avoid speaking, but it didn’t last long. Chimera was watching him with narrowed eyes, but it was Mayu who actually spoke.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“It was the Phantom,” Haruto said shortly. “I’m fine.”

“You have adverse reactions to the corrupted Phantoms?” Mayu said.

“Every time,” Chimera said, traitor that he was. Haruto jammed his helmet onto his head and drove off while neither of them were looking directly at him.

Haruto was unprepared when Rinko herself showed up at the antique shop much later that evening; it was close to midnight, and she looked exhausted, but when he opened the door she folded him into a hug. “Welcome home,” she said.

“I’m back,” he replied, but it made him smile a little. “I wish it was under better circumstances.”

“It’s not exactly something I’m not used to,” Rinko said, which Haruto had to concede wasn’t exactly wrong. Between Rinko’s day job and the help she’d given him, she’d seen quite a bit.

“I didn’t know who else to call, about the, ah.” He swallowed. “About the Gate.”

“Ah.” Rinko sat down opposite the couch, automatically taking the chair nearest Haruto’s usual spot. He mirrored the action without thinking about it, the familiar dynamic giving him a little of a sense of stability. “Kojima Takashi, born 1968, graduated high school, then college, and has worked full time as an accountant at the same company since 1991. Married in 1994, no children, wife passed away in a car accident last year. He was reported missing when he didn’t show up for work two weeks ago and wasn’t in his home.” Rinko paused, fingers moving across the screen on her phone. “He didn’t take time off when his wife passed away, or after that; he’s been putting in overtime hours for the past several months.”

There was something there, closer to the surface, but Haruto didn’t quite have it yet. “Did he – was there a similar pattern before he vanished? Pranks? Lights?”

“His coworkers did report some odd lights in his office on a Friday,” Rinko said. “But he denied seeing anything, and no one wanted to push it any farther. He didn’t go in to the company over the weekend, which he’d been doing, but it wasn’t until Monday that someone went looking for him.”

“There’s something I’m missing,” Haruto said. He could feel it, nearly clear enough to take shape, but he knew that if he pushed at it, it would vanish.

“If you’re missing something, then I am, too.” Rinko sighed. “I can’t tell if these people had anything in common at all, except that they were all Gates.”

“Gates who apparently half-generated Phantoms without another Phantom to send them into despair.” Haruto rubbed at his eyes. “I’m sorry you had to come out here so late for nothing.”

“Hey,” Rinko said, and she was smiling when he looked at her. “It’s not nothing. I’m glad you’re back.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I miss Nitoh,” Rinko said unexpectedly.

Haruto choked out a little bit of a laugh. “Yeah, me too. It’s been weird, with – with Chimera.”

“I can’t imagine,” Rinko said. “The Sabbath was hard on everyone, but.” She bit her lip. “It was rough, to lose two people on the same day, and having you leave so soon after that wasn’t easy either.”

Haruto froze, the pattern he’d thought he’d started to see finally coming clear.

“I’m sorry,” Rinko was saying. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“What? No,” Haruto said. “Rinko, the Gates, the abnormal Phantoms, they were all in Tokyo during the Sabbath.”

“Wait, what?” Rinko sat up straight. “Do you think there’s a connection?”

“I don’t – I don’t know.” Haruto stood and started pacing. “Gates tend to be attracted to large numbers of people, that’s why Wiseman sent his team to hunt Gates in Tokyo to begin with. It might just be coincidence, since Tokyo has more Gates than the rest of the country, but…” He trailed off, chewing at his lip. “But I don’t think that it is.”

“Something during the Sabbath, then?” Rinko asked carefully. “We all had our mana drained, until Chimera broke the connection.”

“Which doesn’t do anything to a normal person,” Haruto said, feeling his way along the potential connection. “Just makes them tired. Like me,” he added with a self-deprecating laugh. “A wizard having mana drained doesn’t have any other adverse effects.”

“But the Gates,” Rinko prompted.

“I don’t know.” Haruto flung himself back onto the couch. “I have to – there might be something.” The table was still covered in part of Fueki’s library. “Something in the way that Phantoms are created. I don’t know enough.”

“If you keep looking at it from this end, I’ll see if I can find any other missing person reports with similar circumstances,” Rinko said, and stood. Haruto walked her to the door, closing it behind her and then leaning on it.

He was on to a pattern, he was sure of it. There had to be a connection between the Sabbath and the abnormal Phantoms, something that was driving some of the Gates to despair and not others. A chill ran through Haruto as he remembered what Rinko had probably put together immediately; Shunpei and Rinko were both Gates, had both been at the Sabbath, had both been forcibly drained by Fueki’s ritual. Haruto felt sick at the thought of either of his friends turning into one of the abominations he’d seen; he knew he shouldn’t be more horrified at the thought of it happening to someone he knew, but he was.

Swallowing hard, Haruto pushed off of the door and opened one of the volumes he’d gone through before; it had had sections he hadn’t thought relevant on his first read-through, but now that he had more of an idea of what he was looking for, he needed to revisit everything he’d already checked. There was no time to waste in sleeping, not if Rinko or Shunpei could be in danger. Haruto suppressed the impulse to check on Shunpei right that minute; his friend wouldn’t thank him for waking him, and at least two of the reports had recorded incidents happening before the Gates had disappeared.

“Shunpei is fine,” Haruto muttered to himself. “Rinko is fine.”

His mind wouldn’t quiet, though, and let him work; what if Mayu was next, he thought, or Yuzuru, or Yamamoto, even though he didn’t think wizards would be vulnerable. What if he himself fell victim to the obscenity that the half-born Phantoms became? Haruto dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and knew he would rather die, which wasn’t helpful.

“What are you doing?” came Nitoh’s voice, and Haruto’s head snapped up.

It was Chimera, not Nitoh, and if he hadn’t been talking to Rinko, he wouldn’t have been startled. It was just that seeing Rinko had brought back memories of the previous year with surprising intensity, and between the sense of nostalgia and Chimera’s recent withdrawal, it was hard not to see Nitoh at first. Haruto looked away, back to the book on the table. “I think I have a lead,” he said.

“That’s good,” said Chimera. He dropped onto the chair that Rinko had vacated earlier, swinging one leg over the side. “What is it?”

“Why do you care?” Haruto snapped.

“I care,” Chimera said, looking hurt. He had no reason to look hurt; he was the one who had been draining Haruto’s mana behind his back, and then had the temerity to claim that Haruto was using him as a substitute for Nitoh.

“You think I’m just using you because I can’t get what I want,” Haruto said. “Why do you care about what I’m doing?”

Chimera tilted his head back, eyes half-closed. “I care that you handle your situation and then fulfill your contract, Soma Haruto,” he said, and now Haruto couldn’t see Nitoh in him at all.

“Right,” Haruto said. “Because you don’t care about me, either. You just want out.”

Chimera stretched its lips in what wasn’t a smile, wide and brittle and almost a caricature of happiness. “You think you know me?” he said. “You think you know everything.” He stretched, the chair creaking around him, and Chimera settled with both feet planted gracefully on the floor. “You don’t even know how much you don’t know, Soma Haruto.”

“I know you’ve been draining mana from me every time we’re – we’re together.” Haruto couldn’t quite keep his voice from hitching, despite his efforts to keep it even.

“That was never a secret,” Chimera said, so easily that Haruto almost didn’t catch the acknowledgement.

“You violated – you should have _asked_ first,” Haruto said. He would have given Chimera his mana freely, especially if it would keep Chimera from hunting innocent potential Gates.

“We had a contract,” Chimera said. “You give me what I need. Those were the terms.”

Haruto didn’t have an answer for that; he settled for ignoring Chimera entirely and flipping through the volume in front of him. Having Chimera’s unsettling stare pointed at him made it hard to concentrate, though, and when Haruto found himself re-reading the same page for the third time and still not retaining any of it, the last frayed bits of his temper snapped. “Go somewhere else,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” Chimera replied.

Haruto snatched the volume off the table, piling others on top of it and heading for the stairs. He was not going to get into a shouting match with Chimera in the middle of the night, in the middle of the antique shop. He had better control of himself than that.

Chimera followed him, drifting languidly up to attach himself to Haruto’s wake without apparently expending any effort at all despite Haruto’s rapid pace. Haruto stopped abruptly, half-hoping Chimera would bump into him and give him an excuse to physically push the Phantom away. Chimera brought himself to a halt bare millimeters from Haruto’s back, almost but not quite brushing against his jacket. Haruto spun around, the edges of the books in his hands catching on Chimera’s chest. He lost his grip at the unexpected resistance, and they tumbled to the floor.

“Stop following me,” Haruto said, voice tight.

“I’m not…” Chimera blinked and looked away, mouth working as if he couldn’t get the words out. “I don’t want to,” he said, finally.

“I don’t care!” Haruto pushed Chimera back, or tried to. The Phantom might as well have been a statue rooted to the floor for all of the effect Haruto’s effort had. Haruto gave up, glaring. “I don’t care what you want, just leave me alone! I’ll get you out of Nitoh’s body and you won’t have to put up with it or with me! I just – I have to – I can’t…” His voice had risen until he wasn’t quite shouting, but it trailed off at the end under Chimera’s unblinking gaze. “I can’t lose Shunpei and Rinko,” he said, almost inaudibly. “Not them, too.”

Chimera tilted his head to the side, as if looking for a new perspective, and Haruto suddenly hated the gesture. “Too?” he said.

“Koyomi. Nitoh.” Haruto swallowed. “You,” he couldn’t help saying, because he’d somehow gone and gotten attached to Chimera no matter what Chimera had been doing behind his back.

“You say lose as if you had me to begin with,” Chimera said, and somehow that was the worst of all of it. The bottom dropped out of Haruto’s stomach, and his traitorous knees wobbled before he locked them in place.

“Yeah, well, sorry for making assumptions after months of screwing,” he said, when he could get his voice working again. “I’m sorry to impose my feelings on you, when all you wanted from me was my mana. I’m sorry that you thought I would deliberately stall figuring out how to set you free just because I love you.”

Chimera finally blinked, mouth dropping open just a little, as Haruto heard the words leaving his mouth without being able to stop them.

“No, I mean, that’s not what I – I have to go.” Chimera was between him and the door, and the only avenue of retreat was the stairs. Haruto didn’t get more than two steps before Chimera caught him by the wrist in an unyielding grip.

“Do you mean that?” Chimera said, voice low and uncertain.

Haruto sat down heavily on the stairs, shoulder twisting just a little past what was comfortable in its socket as Chimera failed to let go. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” He didn’t know if he was desperately clinging to Chimera just because he’d lost too many people in too short a space of time, or if what he felt ran deeper; all he knew was that he didn’t want Chimera to leave.

Chimera sat next to him. “You’re interesting, Soma Haruto.”

Haruto laughed bitterly. “Interesting. Thanks.” He tugged at his wrist, but Chimera still didn’t seem inclined to give it back. “That’s not usually what people like to hear after accidentally telling someone they love them.”

“Was it an accident?” Chimera shifted his grip, stroking Haruto’s palm with a callused thumb.

Haruto closed his eyes, leaning against the wall. “Maybe.”

“You seem much less certain than you did a moment ago.”

Haruto couldn’t tell if Chimera was mocking him, or if he was genuinely confused, and he was suddenly too tired to deal with it. “Yeah, well. I’m sorry. I won’t impose on you. Just pretend I didn’t say it, and as soon as we deal with this, I’ll figure out how to set you free. I promise. I’ll even keep giving you mana, you don’t have to sleep with me to get it.”

“It’s not an imposition,” Chimera said.

“What did you just say.” Haruto sat up straight, turning to face Chimera and finally managing to pull his hand out of the Phantom’s grip.

Chimera cocked his head to the side again, and Haruto resisted the urge to tell him to stop. “It doesn’t…” Chimera paused, and Haruto could almost see him searching for words. “I don’t mind,” Chimera said. “I have very few feelings about most humans, except for you.”

Haruto blinked, trying to work out exactly what Chimera was trying to communicate. “Are…” he said hesitantly. “Are you trying to tell me that you like me?”

“Perhaps,” Chimera said. “I’m not quite sure.”

Haruto dropped his head against the wall again. It made a satisfying thunk, and he repeated it multiple times, until Chimera interposed a hand between the two.

“I suspect that might cause damage,” Chimera said, and he was looking at Haruto with an expression that clearly expressed that he thought Haruto had lost his mind entirely.

“Damage,” Haruto choked out, suddenly unable to stop laughing. “Damage,” he said, because Chimera’s look of skeptical worry had only deepened and Haruto needed to explain what was so funny. He couldn’t get past the single word, though, because it set him off again. “You,” he tried again. “You break my heart, and then you’re worried about damage,” he got out finally, and the laughter fled as quickly as it had come.

The books still scattered over the floor caught his attention; his responsibilities didn’t stop just because he was having a relationship crisis with someone who was going to be gone in a matter of weeks anyway. Haruto heaved himself to his feet and started picking them up, smoothing out the pages of the ones that had landed badly, and took them back to the sofa where he’d started. If he tried to take the books upstairs, he was just going to end up falling asleep over them, and that wouldn’t help anyone. Chimera watched with narrowed eyes until Haruto headed for the kitchen with the intent of brewing coffee; he hated it, but he needed the caffeine.

“What are you doing?” Chimera asked, carefully neutral, from just outside the door.

“I have work to do.” It was rare that anyone in the shop drank coffee, but Haruto knew there was some in the back of one of the cupboards. He just had to find it, and he eventually did; it was tucked behind a bottle of vinegar. The water was nearly boiling by the time he’d found it, and Haruto had to move quickly to measure out the grounds into a filter and put the cone over a mug. He couldn’t suppress a yawn as he poured the first measure of water over the coffee; and added more grounds to the filter.

“Can I help?” Chimera sounded almost contrite.

Haruto blinked, startled enough by the question that he nearly overfilled the coffee cone. He let go of the button on the water heater just in time. “I - I guess,” he said wearily. He didn’t have the emotional energy to argue with Chimera any more than he already had, and if the Phantom wanted to actually be helpful, Haruto wasn’t going to stop him. Not using what resources he had just because they were having an argument wasn’t going to do anyone any good. While waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, Haruto explained to Chimera exactly what conclusions he’d reached and what he was looking for in Fueki’s books.

“Those won’t help,” Chimera said.

The first sip of coffee nearly scalded Haruto’s tongue, but he kept drinking it anyway. “What do you mean?” he said when he’d drained half the cup. It wasn’t helping him feel any more alert.

“It’s not applicable.” Chimera swung up to sit on the very limited open space on the counter, feet dangling freely. “Your Fueki only wanted to create wizards. That was the reason he was targeting Gates.”

“Okay?” Haruto leaned on the counter opposite Chimera and stirred some sugar into the coffee in a vain attempt to improve the taste. He thought it made it worse.

“The process of creating a Phantom…” Chimera grimaced. “It’s hard to explain.”

Haruto wasn’t going to grab Phantom and shake him until answers came out, he told himself, and this time he was actually going to do what he intended, no matter how it had turned out the last time, and he had only been shouting a little bit, and Haruto yanked his wandering attention back to Chimera, who was looking at him expectantly. “I’m sorry,” Haruto said. “Could you repeat that last part?”

Chimera sighed exaggeratedly, which was absolutely not a gesture he’d learned from Haruto. “I said, when you use that ring of yours to destroy the inner Phantom, you block the Gate’s potential. Without suppressing the Phantom, the Gate can’t become a wizard.”

No part of that was new information, really. Haruto nodded. “Okay?”

“So when the Gate doesn’t fall into despair, the potential for the Phantom is still there,” Chimera said impatiently.

“But the Phantom is only born when the Gate does fall into despair,” Haruto said. “At the hand of another Phantom.”

“You’re not listening,” Chimera said, and given that Haruto was at that particular moment draining the coffee cup, it was hard to argue.

“I am,” he said anyway, trying to look as though he were completely focused on Chimera.

“Fatigue is adversely affecting your comprehension,” Chimera muttered, just loud enough for Haruto to hear, and just before Haruto could protest, he raised his voice and continued. “Despair disrupts the Gate’s Underworld,” he said. “Which is what lets the Phantom form. It’s not the only way to damage the Underworld.”

The caffeine might finally have been kicking in, connecting Haruto’s thoughts to what Chimera was evidently trying to explain. “Because of their mana?” he said.

Chimera looked pleased. “Yes.”

“Let me see if I have this straight.” Haruto put down the empty cup and paced back and forth across the kitchen. “Any potential Gate can fall into despair – not fall into despair, but have their Underworld broken enough to allow a Phantom to be generated, if their mana is disrupted somehow.”

Chimera nodded and opened his mouth, but Haruto wasn’t done.

“So the Sabbath,” he said, pacing more rapidly. “The Sabbath pulled mana out of everyone, not just Gates, but only the Gates would have been affected long-term, if their Underworlds were disrupted enough to let the Phantoms start to generate.”

“That might be possible,” Chimera said, a speculative expression on his face. “The Sabbath was uniquely disruptive.”

Haruto stopped pacing suddenly. “It was – I – we stopped the ritual, but it was already too late.”

“We?” Chimera snorted. “You had nothing to do with stopping the ritual.”

Chimera wasn’t wrong, but Haruto shook his head. “I should have – I shouldn’t have let it get – this is my fault.”

He could see it clearly, now; the Phantoms, slowly maturing after each Gate in Tokyo had been damaged just enough to allow the process to start but not enough for the newly-created Phantoms to form fully. The new Phantoms were tangled up in their Gates’ Underworlds just as Chimera was tangled up in Nitoh’s body, unable to fully break free while the Gates’ bodies couldn’t take the strain.

Haruto thought he might throw up everything he’d just drunk and pressed a hand to his mouth. It wouldn’t have happened if he’d found a way to stop Fueki, if he hadn’t left Nitoh on his own, if Haruto had been able to help Koyomi sooner.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chimera snapped, and the nausea eased.

“Shunpei and Rinko,” Haruto said, the syllables running over each other. “I – they don’t – their inner Phantoms were destroyed. I destroyed them.”

Chimera shrugged, bored with the topic of Haruto’s friends. “No inner Phantom means nothing left to be generated,” he said. “They’re probably safe.”

It still wasn’t right that Haruto felt such a wave of relief in knowing that his friends weren’t likely to fall victim to the aftereffects of something that still had the potential to affect dozens or even hundreds of people; Haruto didn’t know how many potential Gates there were, and he couldn’t tell by looking. Even Koyomi hadn’t been able to tell, although she’d been able to see Phantoms when they wore a human skin. That Shunpei and Rinko were safe just meant that Haruto could focus on fixing the problem, he thought, but he still felt guilty for being relieved.

“I have to –“ he started, and then broke off. Chimera looked at him quizzically. “I can’t identify Gates,” he said, frustrated. “There’s no way for me to tell, and if I can’t tell who’s a Gate, how can I tell when their Phantoms start to break free?”

Chimera pressed his lips together. “You can’t monitor the entire population of Tokyo,” he said flatly. “It’s impossible.”

“I can’t just leave them to die, either!” Haruto’s voice cracked, and he wrapped his arms around himself. “I can’t – if I find them soon enough, maybe I can undo the damage.”

“There are hundreds of Gates in Tokyo,” Chimera said. “Not including the ones that might have fled, after the Sabbath. Like the one we found in the middle of the woods,” it added helpfully.

Haruto hadn’t even considered the Gates that were no longer in Tokyo, although it seemed obvious in hindsight. He’d seen the first two abnormal Phantoms in completely different parts of the country, after all. He sank down onto the nearest chair and buried his head in his hands at the prospect of what now seemed like an even more insurmountable task.

Chimera crouched in front of him, inexplicably dismayed. “What?” it said.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” Haruto whispered.

“I just told you, it’s probably too much for you to handle,” Chimera said with an air of being reasonable, as if he’d handed Haruto a solution instead of making everything worse.

“I have to figure out how to identify the Gates,” Haruto said, ignoring Chimera’s total lack of support for handling what was slowly developing into a crisis. “Before the Phantoms start to break free.”

“Soma Haruto,” Chimera said, but Haruto wasn’t listening. Fueki had figured out some way to identify Gates, on the night of the first Sabbath, after which he’d sent out Phantoms to find them. Haruto blinked, looking at Chimera.

“Can you identify Gates?” he asked, interrupting whatever Chimera was saying.

Chimera closed his mouth with a snap, not looking happy at the question and where he clearly saw it going. “Not easily,” he said. “Not while I’m tethered to this body.”

“But you can do it,” Haruto pressed, ignoring the word _tethered_.

Chimera sighed and sat back on his heels. “You’re lucky I like you,” he muttered, and Haruto pushed back at the pleased little flutter that the words evoked; Chimera didn’t mean what the words implied, he’d said as much, and Haruto didn’t have the time or energy to deal with it. Oblivious to Haruto’s internal struggle, Chimera continued speaking at a normal volume. “If I slip out of this body as far as I can, then I can tell Gates apart. But,” it held up a finger to forestall Haruto’s excitement. “If I do that, this body starts to die.”

“Oh.” Haruto remembered the demonstration Chimera had given him months before, the eeriness of Chimera’s half-visible true body while Nitoh’s body started to fail without the Phantom’s support. That put him back to square one and the need to develop a reliable way to find Gates. Haruto eyed Fueki’s library; the man had to have figured something out, unless he’d just kidnapped Phantoms to begin with. Haruto considered that avenue and tabled it for potential exploration later. “I’ll figure something else out, then,” he said for Chimera’s benefit; the other man was giving him an expectant look.

Chimera frowned. “Obviously,” he said, but he was still looking at Haruto as if he wanted something.

“Unless you know some other way to find Gates,” Haruto said, not really expecting Chimera to just pull out another solution. It occurred to him that he and Mayu should really have asked their resident Phantom ally about the process of generating Phantoms to begin with, rather than spending so much time going through Fueki’s amassed literature.

“I don’t,” Chimera said, irritated for some reason. “Would you let it go?”

“I can’t,” Haruto said. “I have to fix this.”

“Why is it –“ Chimera stopped and took a deep breath. “You don’t need to try to fix it right now,” he said.

“Every minute I waste is another minute that those Gates are losing.” Haruto reached for the volume he thought would be the most useful, based on what he remembered. Chimera put his hand on it and refused to let Haruto pick it up.

“After months, I don’t think a few more hours will make a difference,” Chimera said.

“Those months happened because I wasn’t paying attention to what really mattered,” Haruto said, aware as he was saying it that the sentence made no sense. There was no way he could have known what aftereffects the Sabbath would have, particularly if it had taken months for the Gates’ Underworlds to break down enough to allow the abnormal Phantoms to break free to begin with. It still didn’t matter; he was supposed to protect Gates, not let them die.

“You can’t possibly be serious.” Chimera stood, releasing the book so abruptly that Haruto lost his grip on it and it hit the floor. “You _are_ serious.” He shook his head. “Fascinating.”

Haruto frowned at Chimera’s retreating back. The Phantom – he had to get used to thinking of Chimera as a Phantom, and not as a human, and certainly not as someone or something he had feelings for – had no reason to be so upset, he thought dimly. For a moment, Haruto wanted nothing more than to run after Chimera and undo the widening rift between the two of them, even if that would only make it harder to let Chimera go in the end. He got as far as standing and taking the first step before he stopped himself and went to make more coffee instead.

“Get it together, Haruto,” he said to the electric kettle. “You can’t always get what you want.”

It seemed monstrously unfair, though, that he couldn’t have anything he wanted; not a long and happy life for his closest friend, not the chance to confess to his crush, not even the chance to fall in love with someone who wasn’t a wizard or a monster with an expiration date. Haruto measured coffee into the cone, each scoop counting something he couldn’t have. The kettle finally beeped, and he turned to it gratefully.

“I should have seen it coming,” he murmured. The drip of coffee into the mug overshadowed his voice, so he kept talking. “I knew he doesn’t feel things the way we do, I knew he was only with me because he was using me for mana while waiting for me to fix him. Even if he put up with me being selfish, and stubborn, and finding somewhere for – for Koyomi.”

Months, and it was still hard to say her name out loud. Haruto resolutely picked up the cup of black coffee and took it back into the front of the shop. He picked up the book off the floor and began to page through it. He had work to do.


	7. A Supplementary Story: You Never Walk Alone

Frustration was an emotion with which Chimera was quite familiar, and it was not pleased by the familiarity. Its current source of frustration was trying to solve a problem with no solution; there was no way to tell whether or not a human was a Gate without possessing a Phantom’s particular senses, and there was simply no way to screen the population of a city as huge as Tokyo for potential Gates and then go about handling their inner Phantoms one by one.

Simply put, Chimera was fairly sure that there was little or nothing Soma could do to stop the inevitable wave of Phantoms that would wreak havoc on the city. If they were lucky, the horde wouldn’t all mature at once, but Chimera didn’t like to count on luck. The upside, of course, was that once the Phantoms were broken free of their hosts, they matured properly and were delicious, and Chimera was looking forward to having something to hunt again. Getting mana from Soma was enjoyable, to be sure, but not quite the adrenaline-pounding pleasure of a chase and a kill.

Even the prospect of a significant increase in prey did nothing to blunt Chimera’s frustration, though; he’d tried to do something human and it had backfired spectacularly. He wasn’t sure that he felt the same thing Soma did, but knowing that he enjoyed having Soma around and would miss him if he were gone was surely close enough. He’d tried to return Soma’s feelings, only to have Soma accuse him of breaking his heart and obsess on the problem of the Gates.

Chimera had tried to use actions instead of words to convey affection, and Soma had thrown that back in his face. He stretched out on the bed that served no purpose if Soma wasn’t there to sleep on it and stared at the familiar ceiling with a faint sense of resentment. Chimera closed its eyes and sank into what passed for its Underworld, searching the tangle keeping it trapped once again.

The threads holding Chimera in place were constant; the shape of a tangle blocking the only exit out of Kosuke’s Underworld didn’t change, though the threads had enough give to allow Chimera to slip part of the way out of Kosuke’s body. It couldn’t work its way entirely free through the narrow gaps, but it could get most of its essence past the barrier while the threads tangled in the rest. It did so now, looking at the tangle from as far outside of it as possible for the first time, and noticed something new. The silver thread it had severed months ago in its first attempt to break free of Kosuke’s body and the Beast Driver hadn’t vanished; it was wound through the base of the tangle, where Chimera hadn’t been able to see it from inside the remains of Kosuke’s underworld.

Getting closer to the silver thread required some odd mental contortions, but Chimera was nothing if not flexible. It angled its perceptions down toward the silver thread, keeping an absent eye on Kosuke’s body. The severed ends of the thread hung, dangling in a way that seemed intrinsically wrong. One end led to a root grounded in Kosuke’s Underworld, as it should have been. The other end spooled off into the tangle. Chimera tried to follow it, nearly losing it in the twists and turns that were less familiar from this direction, aware of and ignoring the growing ache that came with the unnatural manipulations of its spirit.

The end of the silver thread branched, when Chimera finally found it, splitting off into countless threads running deeper into the tangle. Chimera reached just a little too far, and the sense of a tether snapped it back inside Kosuke’s Underworld, but it knew where the silver thread had separated out. The silver thread wasn’t lost in the tether – it _was_ the tether. The impassable thicket binding Chimera inside Kosuke’s body was a trap composed of Kosuke’s soul.

Chimera surfaced with a sense of uncertainty, opening its borrowed eyes – and there was no doubt now that they _were_ borrowed, if Kosuke’s soul was trapped along with Chimera – to see nothing resembling any kind of answer in the ceiling overhead.

Taking a deep breath, Chimera placed itself in Kosuke’s Underworld again. “Nitoh Kosuke?” it said, but there was no answer, just as there had been no answer when Chimera had first found itself trapped. It lay a hand on the spun-thread barrier of Kosuke’s soul and tried again, to no avail.

The artificial light was almost painful when Chimera finally climbed out of Kosuke’s Underworld, having given up trying to get anything resembling a response from its former host. It wondered briefly if knowing that Kosuke wasn’t gone should change how it felt about escaping Kosuke’s body, but it was a moot point; even if Chimera could give Kosuke his body back, it wasn’t sure it wanted to.


	8. Not Today

“Haruto, what are you doing?”

Something didn’t feel right; there was a hard edge digging into his shoulder and one of his feet was wedged underneath an unyielding surface. One hand was trapped against his chest, and the other was numb. He couldn’t see. Haruto tried to free his trapped hand, but his struggles got him nowhere.

“Haruto,” came the voice again, sounding exasperated this time, and the weight was lifted off his chest. “Wake up.”

Haruto blinked, opening his eyes, and the fuzzy outlines greeting him resolved themselves into the coffee table in the front of the antique shop. He had managed to slide off the couch and end up pinned between it and the table, one arm caught on the couch and the other held down by the book Mayu had just removed from on top of him. “Mayu?” he said, as his brain caught up with his eyes and gave his mouth a heads-up.

“Why – never mind.” Mayu extended a hand.

Haruto ignored it, laboriously pulling himself into a sitting position and flexing his numb hand. Pins and needles pricked painfully under his skin. “What time is it?” he asked. Sunlight was streaming through the windows, but he was too tired to figure out what the angle meant.

“Late,” Mayu said. “Just after eight.”

That explained the noises in the kitchen; in theory, the shop opened at nine. Haruto’s thoughts felt sluggish, his eyes as though they were full of sand. “Mayu,” he said again. “I know what’s going on.”

By the time he had finished explaining, she had joined him on the floor, staring at him with equal parts horror and fascination. “We should have asked our resident Phantom to begin with,” she said when Haruto stopped talking.

Haruto closed his mouth with a snap. He hadn’t quite thought of it that way.

“Does he – he can’t help with detecting Phantoms, can he,” Mayu said.

Haruto shook his head. “Only at a very short range, and he’d have to leave Nitoh’s body as far as he can to do it. It, uh, doesn’t go well for, um. For the body.”

“I would ask if you found anything.” Mayu looked at the pile of books speculatively. “So our problem is two-fold; we have to find the Gates, and then we have to repair each Underworld before the Phantoms break free.”

“That sounds about right.” Haruto rubbed his eyes, but the sandy feeling didn’t go away. He rested his head on his knees, trying to pull together some sense of motivation, or at least energy. “I need to see a Gate before the Phantom matures enough.”

“Finding the Gates, then,” Mayu said, and got a speculative expression on her face. “You know, there are a few people we already know about.”

The bottom dropped out of Haruto’s stomach all over again with the thought of all the Gates they’d worked so hard to save over the course of the past year, while Fueki had been searching for wizards to power the Sabbath. He gritted his teeth. One in particular stood out. “Kazuya,” he said.

“Who?”

Haruto was already on his feet, cell phone in hand and scrolling through his contacts. The call went through, at least; Haruto could hear the phone ringing. And ringing. And ringing. Eventually it went to voice mail, and Haruto left a message. He had no idea what, exactly, he’d said when he hung up, only that Kazuya should get in touch with him as soon as possible. “Naomi,” he said, ignoring Mayu’s frown.

The call to Naomi went straight to voicemail. Haruto resisted the urge to bang his head against the nearest wall, which was too far away to reach easily in any case, and made for the door. He had Kazuya’s address, even if he’d barely talked to his old friend since killing the Phantom that had been targeting him, and it was early enough that Kazuya might still be home. Haruto called Naomi again, leaving a message that her boyfriend was in danger and pleading with her to call him back.

“Mayu,” Haruto said, and told her to keep looking for ways to find Gates that none of them knew personally. Mayu agreed, unhappily, and Haruto ran out the door, fueled by a baseless sense of apprehension that he nonetheless could not ignore.

The streets were oddly empty, despite the relatively late hour, and Haruto made good time. He pushed well past the posted speed limit, the roar of the bike’s engine echoing through the streets, and nearly convinced himself that he was going to reach Kazuya before the Phantom inside matured and murdered one of his oldest friends. He had reached Kazuya’s block when the burgeoning sense of hope was abruptly derailed by a sizzling whip of energy cracking the street in front of him.

Haruto wrenched the bike sideways, skidding to a graceless halt and scrambling to his feet. He left his bike where it was, lying on its side, and turned to face the Phantom. It was a brilliant yellow, glittering under the sun. Its armor looked almost normal, apart from the whips extending from each wrist. They coiled around the Phantom’s hands, crackling with energy. Haruto jammed a transformation ring on his finger without looking and activated the Driver.

The Phantom lashed out before the Driver finished its chant, but its whips bounced off the portal, and Haruto was left unharmed. “I don’t have time for this!” he shouted at the Phantom. He refused to believe that it was Kazuya, that it was too late. “You’re not making me sick,” he muttered. “You can’t be Kazuya. You have to be a normal Phantom.” Bind shot chains toward the Phantom, tangling it and its whips long enough for Haruto to scan Copy and then Special, pouring rivers of flame onto the Phantom from multiple directions.

The chains glowed with heat, and the Phantom sank to its knees. The copies faded away, but the Phantom burst free. Haruto wasn’t quick enough to dodge, expecting it to fling its whips at him rather than rush him with an all-out physical assault. It grabbed him and flung him against the nearest wall; Haruto crashed through it, his fall broken by a solidly built headstone. The Phantom was coming toward him, intent on demolishing the cemetery with him in it. Haruto used the few seconds to summon the Drago Timer, shoving it onto his wrist and starting the revolution.

Pain crackled up his calf, and he looked down to see the Phantom’s energy whip wrapped tightly around his ankle. It lifted him into the air, and Haruto worked faster. Three clones materialized, each wearing a different color and each pulling mana from him, and he launched a concerted attack on the Phantom from four different perspectives. The Phantom buckled under the combined assault, exploding in the street with a surprisingly contained blast.

The clones vanished and Haruto approached the remains of the Phantom carefully, searching for the body. There was nothing, just a black stain on the cracked pavement, and he frowned at it. There should have been a body, if it had been an abnormal Phantom. If it had been Kazuya. There was nothing. He felt the transformation falling away as the sound of a motorcycle approached from behind.

“Haruto?” said someone from in front of him, but that wasn’t where the motorcycle driver was. Haruto frowned, looking in both directions, trying to reconcile the conflicting information. “Haruto!” came the voice again, and Kazuya was running toward him.

“You’re not dead,” Haruto tried to say, but Kazuya was suddenly gone, along with everything else.

Haruto opened his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling and voices arguing back and forth a few feet away, making it the second time in a single day he’d woken up not knowing where he was. Both voices were familiar, and Haruto could tell they were arguing about him.

“Stop,” he said, sitting up. The act brought a wave of dizziness that nearly pushed him back down, and he swallowed. He could see both Chimera and Kazuya now, heads turned toward him with identical expressions of surprise and dismay. “Whatever you’re arguing about, just stop.” His head hurt, a dull throb he associated with too much mana drain and too little recovery time, and he wanted to go right back to sleep, but he’d come looking for Kazuya for a reason.

“You need a hospital,” Kazuya said.

Haruto swung his legs over the side of what turned out to be a couch and leaned against the back until the second wave of dizziness passed. It wasn’t as bad as the first. “It’s just mana drain,” he said. “It’s fine.”

“Is that why he –“ Kazuya flapped a hand in Chimera’s general direction. Chimera had stopped talking when Haruto had woken, and was watching him intently. “He – there was some sort of weird light, going from him to you,” Kazuya said.

“You gave me mana – how did you give me mana?” Momentarily derailed, Haruto stared at Chimera in shock.

“That’s not relevant,” Chimera said. “There have been developments.”

“Kazuya is a Gate,” Haruto said, but Chimera just looked at him, completely missing the significance. “Kazuya is a Gate whose Phantom was never destroyed,” Haruto clarified, which led both of them to stare at him as though he’d sprouted a second head. “I need to see his Underworld.”

Chimera sighed, annoyance coming to the forefront. “Stubborn,” he said.

“What do you mean, see my Underworld?” Kazuya spoke right over Chimera, looking back and forth between the two of them. “What’s going on?”

“Were you in Tokyo, when the – in September?” Haruto asked.

“When the sky went dark?” Kazuya said, quietly, and at Haruto’s nod, he took a deep breath. “I was here,” he said. “It, uh. It felt weird. I felt weird. It hasn’t really gone away.” He sat down, next to Haruto. “Is it something you can fix?”

“I hope so,” Haruto said, and gave him what was supposed to be a reassuring smile. It probably would have been more reassuring if his hands hadn’t been shaking ever so slightly. “Put this on.” He handed an Engage ring to Kazuya. “Middle finger, right hand.”

“Soma Haruto,” Chimera said, voice tight.

“You were the one who said their Underworlds had been disrupted,” Haruto said, pointing at Chimera. “You were the one who said that was how it was happening. I can’t let this happen to Kazuya. I can’t.”

“Let _what_ happen?” Kazuya said. He’d been calm, for the most part, taking Haruto’s sudden appearance in stride, but now he was beginning to look nervous. It struck Haruto that he had no idea what Chimera had said to Kazuya while he was unconscious.

“It’s a long story,” Haruto said, and scanned Engage.  Kazuya fell against the back of the couch, portal blossoming over him. Haruto stood, bracing himself against the couch for the half-second it took to catch his balance. “Chimera, please – keep an eye on him from out here, okay?”

Without waiting for a reply, Haruto dove into Kazuya’s Underworld.

He found himself standing in a soccer stadium, the pitch surrounded by myriad doors. Kazuya himself was nowhere to be seen, but he could have been behind any one of them. Haruto turned slowly in a circle, the sense of exhaustion having temporarily dropped away. The sky overhead was subtly wrong, not quite the right shade of blue, and when Haruto looked closer, he could see that it was covered with myriad cracks.

The nearest door creaked open. Haruto brought his gaze down from the sky and noticed that the turf upon which he was standing was covered in the same fine webbing of cracks. He dropped to one knee and pressed a hand against the nearest break; it felt spongy and wrong. He wiped his hand on his pants and walked toward the door. The ground gave oddly beneath his feet, and it was contributing to the general sense of unease.

The space behind the door was dark. Haruto pulled it all the way open, peering through, but he couldn’t make anything out. “Kazuya?” he called.

No answer. Haruto backed out and tried another door, and another. Each of them led to the same featureless darkness. He climbed the steps to the top of the stadium instead, until he could see outwards. The sight beyond the walls almost made him wish he hadn’t; Haruto had expected some variation of the nothing that was behind the doors, but instead, the stadium was surrounded by a vast overgrowth. For a moment, he couldn’t quite process the sight.

The Underworld beyond Kazuya’s stadium settled into a forest, vines looping between huge trees, fleshy leaves brushing against each other. It covered the ground as far as Haruto could see, the looping vines reaching upward to latch onto the stadium walls. Everywhere the vines touched had spread out into a fine tracing of cracks, and Haruto almost expected the stadium to crumble under the slightest touch. It was still standing at his intrusion, though, which gave him some hope.

The color was the worst of the encroaching forest, dull browns and bilious greens, sickly yellows and virulent reds streaking through the foliage. The leaves looked infected and rotting as they grew, glistening with the sheen of overripe fruit about to burst. Haruto backed away, still looking for Kazuya and any sign of his inner Phantom. Anything he could fight, instead of this widespread corruption.

“Kazuya!” he called again.

Movement at the center of the field caught his eye, right where he’d landed when he’d entered Kazuya’s Underworld to begin with. Haruto ran back downwards, keeping his eye on the distant figure in case it vanished again, and nearly tripped more than once. He made it onto the pitch without incident, the figure resolving into Kazuya, wearing the same jersey and shorts he had the day he’d been injured.

“Kazuya!”

Kazuya was facing away from Haruto, but he turned around the second time Haruto called his name. He was paper white, dark circles under his eyes and Haruto thought he could see the bones shifting beneath Kazuya’s skin. “Haruto,” he said, and smiled. It was horrifying.

“Kazuya,” Haruto breathed, a third time.

“It feels strange,” Kazuya said. Up close, Haruto could see the same reddish streaks peeking out from beneath Kazuya’s jersey. “It feels so much stranger, in here.”

Kazuya, despite Haruto’s attempts to find him, shouldn’t have been aware within his own Underworld. It contributed to the sense of wrongness. “I’m going to fix this,” Haruto said, but if he didn’t have a Phantom to fight, there was nothing to fix. It was the Phantom that destroyed the Gate’s Underworld from within – Haruto knew, suddenly, that the Phantom was surrounding both of them. “Of course,” he said.

“What?” A patch of skin flaked off Kazuya’s cheek, leaving red and raw flesh beneath it.

“It’s not maturing normally,” Haruto said. He felt as though his thoughts were finally kicking into gear. “The forest surrounding – that’s the Phantom. I should have – it should have been obvious. Stay here.”

The center of Kazuya’s Underworld was the safest place for his soul, and Haruto was torn between being relieved to see him follow directions and repulsed by his not-quite-right movements as Kazuya started idly kicking a ball up and down the pitch.

The forest had gotten denser in the few moments since Haruto had last seen it, dripping wet with half-congealed fluids and sagging under its own weight. Haruto slipped the transformation ring on his finger and summoned Flame Style. “You’re my opponent, huh,” he said. “Then it’s showtime!”

The forest rippled, and Haruto tried to burn it to the ground. The flames fizzled out as soon as they hit it, and so did lightning, floods, and ice. Nothing so much as made a dent. Haruto sank to his knees, panting, feeling the weight of the malevolence staring back at him. The sky overhead darkened, and the ground underneath his feet felt abruptly insubstantial. Kazuya was at the end of his rope; the Phantom was about to break free. Haruto stood and summoned the Dragon. It manifested, roaring, and Haruto flung himself onto its back.

“Help me,” he whispered, but it was his will that pushed the Dragon to do his bidding and not his words. It spat flame at the forest, to no avail. Smoke curled up in little wisps, but the forest was undiminished. As high as Haruto went, the forest went forever. It rippled again, and Haruto was gripped with a sense of urgency. “This cannot be hopeless,” he growled, and his hand brushed against Koyomi’s soul. Hope was warm under his fingers, warm enough to feel through the armored gloves. “Koyomi?”

Hope pulsed hotter, and Haruto slipped the ring on his finger. The driver sang as he scanned the ring, channeling a wave of energy through Haruto and then the Dragon, racing outwards to rain down on the forest like falling snow. The forest shriveled wherever one of the flecks of light touched, blackening and dying while the stadium revived into bright and solid color. The figure of Kazuya faded, replaced by flickering memories.

Haruto landed, dismissing the Dragon and feeling the ground solid beneath his boots. The forest was gone, Kazuya’s Underworld strong and whole and healthy. “Koyomi,” he said. The ring pulsed again, more weakly than before, but Haruto smiled. “Thank you,” he said, and the warmth slowly faded away.

Kazuya’s apartment was still brightly sunlit when Haruto emerged from his friend’s Underworld; somehow he’d expected it to be dark. Kazuya blinked, feeling at the ring on his finger. “What, uh, is it okay?” he asked.

Haruto released the transformation, letting his armor fade away. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You _are_ fine.”

“Reckless,” Chimera drawled. Haruto had forgotten he was there. “But effective,” the Phantom added.

“I know how to fix it,” Haruto said. “I know how to fix them all, if we can just find them.” The world was wavering around him, and he rubbed his forehead. It didn’t help. “We just have to find them.”

“You’re not – is he okay?” Kazuya looked from Haruto to Chimera.

“He’s stubborn, and reckless,” Chimera said, and Kazuya snorted out a laugh. Haruto felt he should have been insulted by the comment, but he was too tired to care, and he had work to do.

“Keep the ring on,” he said to Kazuya. “Tell me if it starts feeling strange again.”

Unexpectedly, Kazuya pulled him into a hug. After a startled moment, Haruto hugged him back. It was nice, until Haruto found himself needing Kazuya’s support to stay upright. He was not going to pass out, he told himself, he hadn’t drained his mana that thoroughly, he’d gotten a boost from Chimera, and he was going to stay on his feet and help Mayu figure out how to find the rest of the Gates.

“I’m okay,” he said, answering Kazuya’s increasingly worried questions. “I’m okay.” He straightened, shaky but upright.

“You tell me if there’s anything I can do,” Kazuya said, searching Haruto’s face.

“Stay alive,” Haruto offered. Kazuya smiled, but Haruto wasn’t joking. He made it down the stairs without incident, and all the way to his bike. It was still on its side, and he couldn’t lift it. He crouched beside it, trying to control his breathing, and a shadow fell over him.

“This is ridiculous,” Chimera said. He lifted the bike with one hand, lowering the kickstand and steering Haruto toward his own bike. “You can come back for that.”

“But,” Haruto said.

Chimera actually growled. Haruto was surprised enough that he fell silent and climbed onto the back of Chimera’s bike without further protest. He wrapped his arms around Chimera’s waist, grateful that he didn’t have to think about driving. Not that he would admit it to Chimera, but he was also happy for even the limited physical contact, even if it reminded him of what he couldn’t have. He couldn’t be upset at Chimera spending months draining his mana, he found; Chimera hadn’t actively tried to hide it, he hadn’t been malicious, he’d simply been abiding by the contract. They were both at fault for the misunderstanding.

“Stay awake back there,” Chimera said over his shoulder, and Haruto tightened his grip.

“I am,” he said, the words coming out peevish and irritable. He felt marginally better when they pulled up to the antique shop, enough that he didn’t waver on his feet after dismounting from the bike. Chimera was still watching him with an air of displeasure, and Haruto had no idea why. “I, uh,” he said. The street was mostly empty, even with the sun high overhead, and it was freezing. Haruto looked at Chimera, willing him to understand, somehow. “I’m going to help you.”

“Help me,” Chimera said flatly, eyes suddenly hooded.

“Help you get out of Kosuke’s body,” Haruto said. “I promise.”

Chimera sighed heavily. “You’ve been saying that for months, Soma Haruto. First the business with your friend’s soul, and now this. There will always be an emergency. There will always be something pressing that demands your attention.”

It wasn’t fair, for Chimera to do this now. Haruto squeezed his eyes shut and opened them, but the grainy feeling didn’t go away. “I keep my promises,” he said.

“You want to,” Chimera said, and Haruto had no idea what he meant by that.

“If this is how I feel about you,” he started carefully.

Chimera made an incomprehensible noise in the back of his throat, strode around his bike, and cupped his hands roughly around Haruto’s face. Without saying a word, he leaned forwards and kissed Haruto on the mouth, hard and insistent. Haruto froze at the feel of Chimera’s palms against his jaw, but by the time Chimera pulled away, Haruto was clinging to him.

“I,” he said. His thoughts were frozen again. “I thought.”

“Take care of your pressing matters, Soma Haruto,” Chimera said, and Haruto thought he was somewhere between amused and resigned.

“I, uh.” Haruto licked his lips. “Right.” Chimera hadn’t let go, and Haruto was reluctant to move. “You,” he said tentatively. “I thought you…”

“Are all humans this dense?” Chimera said, and Haruto finally felt something besides confusion and the mad blend of hope and wariness churning inside his gut. A flicker of indignation overlaid all of it, giving him the will to break free and back off a solid half a step. He still hadn’t let go of Chimera, though, and Chimera was eying him with pure amusement now.

“I’m not dense,” Haruto muttered. “You don’t communicate clearly.”

“Everything is words, words, words,” Chimera said. He might have said something else, but the door to the antique shop opened with a crash.

“Are you two coming in?” Mayu said impatiently.

“We will speak,” Chimera said, ignoring Mayu. “If you need words to communicate, Soma Haruto, I will use them. When your urgent situation has been resolved.”

Leaving Haruto completely and utterly baffled once again, Chimera freed himself from Haruto’s grip and brushed past Mayu to enter the antique shop.

“Well?” Mayu said.

“Yeah,” Haruto answered, coming back to himself with a start. “I’m coming.”

Shunpei, the only person who hadn’t caused Haruto some sort of emotional turmoil or distress over the past several days, continued his winning streak by handing Haruto a mug of what turned out to be strong coffee with enough sugar to mask its bitterness. It was thick enough that Haruto was dourly sure that if he dipped a spoon into it, the spoon would stay upright and then possibly dissolve. He all but inhaled the entire cup and asked for another one before explaining what had happened with Kazuya.

“You repaired it,” Mayu said.

Haruto, halfway through the second mug, spread out his free hand in a shrug. “Koyomi did,” he said after he’d swallowed. “I was just the conduit.”

“Koyomi,” Mayu said thoughtfully. “The Hope ring.” She took a deep breath. “It makes sense, if despair disrupts the Gates, that Hope would be able to counteract it.”

Haruto hadn’t thought of it quite like that, but he nodded. “The problem is finding the Gates.” The enormity of the task in front of him was suddenly daunting, the potential of hundreds of Gates to track down and heal from within before it was too late, and he was all but sure that he would fail to reach the vast majority of them on time.

“About that,” Mayu said. “I had an idea.”


	9. Jump

Chimera prowled around the edges of the antique shop as Mayu explained her plan; it seemed to him to be something along the lines of recreating a situation that had solved the problem in order to create a solution, which was one of the most ridiculous rationales he had ever heard. If this was the result of the training Haruto’s mentor had provided, Chimera was not impressed.

“You want to do what?” Haruto was saying.

“The Sabbath was how Fueki reached all the Gates in the first place,” Mayu said, stumbling slightly over her mentor’s name. She didn’t attach an honorific to it, or a title of any kind; Chimera was fairly sure this held some sort of significance, given the half-defiant expression that flickered over her face so quickly he wasn’t sure he’d actually seen it as she said the name. “I’m not saying we recreate the entire thing, but we could reach the entire city simultaneously.”

Haruto, despite his clear exhaustion, was sitting up straight, peering at whatever Mayu was pointing at with interest. “We still need the same power source,” he said. “And a focus.” He reached around her and tapped his finger on what Chimera could now see was one of Fueki’s books.

“The connection was the first part of the ritual,” Mayu said, which didn’t answer Haruto’s question. “See, here.” She flipped pages back and forth, and Haruto nodded.

“The power source,” he said again. Chimera had a sneaking suspicion as to where Haruto was going with his question, and he sighed.

Finding that he still held Kosuke’s soul changed matters; Chimera couldn’t abandon Kosuke’s body without knowing if Kosuke’s soul would be trapped in it. He’d snapped the connection between the two, and he knew that if he left the body, it would die. Leaving Kosuke’s soul tethered to a decaying organic husk was a deeply repugnant thought, although Chimera wasn’t sure he would have cared enough for it to affect his actions even a few months ago.

As far as Chimera could tell, Kosuke’s soul was intact, despite Chimera’s attempts to break through it on more than on occasion. He still hadn’t been able to speak to Kosuke, and any attempt to enter Kosuke’s real Underworld just put Chimera back into the featureless box from which he’d tried to escape the day of the Sabbath so few months ago. He’d tried to approach Haruto with the situation, despite Haruto’s peculiar reaction to Chimera’s attempt to return his feelings, only to find Haruto thoroughly distracted by first a fight and then a severe lack of mana.

Chimera had, for the first time that he could remember, voluntarily siphoned mana into another living being. It had been tricky, and the matter hadn’t been helped by Haruto’s friend demanding to know what he was doing. Haruto’s friend had insisted on calling Chimera by Kosuke’s name, even after Chimera had corrected him. Haruto, predictably, had woken from the mana transfusion only to jump headlong into the next crisis, and Chimera was dismayed to discover that his own feelings on the matter had inexplicably shifted from irritation at the waste of resources to affection for Haruto and his bizarre behavior.

“Chimera?”

At the sound of his name, Chimera looked up. He’d ended up staring out the front window at his bike reflecting the afternoon sunlight. “What?”

“Would you?” Haruto pressed.

“Would I what?” Chimera had no idea what he’d asked to begin with, and the wary expression on Mayu’s face in conjunction with the entreaty on Haruto’s set off mental warning bells.

“The ritual,” Haruto started, and Chimera resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. It was a very human gesture, and he was not going to mimic it.

“You want me to be a power source,” he said flatly, fairly sure he was correct. “Because you’re going to be the focus.”

“Technically Koyomi is the focus,” Haruto said, which was essentially the same. Chimera bared his teeth at Haruto, and when had he started referring to the man by his given name in the privacy of his own head.

“You’re the conduit for the ritual to reach Koyomi,” Chimera said. “Don’t split hairs with me. Besides,” he added, when it looked like Haruto was going to argue with him anyway. “ _You’re_ still connected to all of them, or you wouldn’t react so poorly every time one of them hatches.”

“The ritual needs four wizards to act as the initial power source,” Mayu said before Haruto could so much as open his mouth. It was a commendable effort to keep the conversation on track. “I’d be one. If Mr. Yamamoto and Yuzuru agree, then we need one more, and I think you’re close enough for it to work.”

“The original ritual,” Chimera said. “Its intent was to drain the wizards completely.”

“That’s the interesting part,” Mayu said, and Chimera revised his opinion of her upwards. He hadn’t seen her display practicality to quite that high of a level, in the sense that the life of a fellow wizard became a resource to be used. “There are supposed to be safeguards to keep a power source from being fatally drained. Fueki altered the ritual to bypass them, in order to get more power.”

Chimera’s opinion of Mayu went right back to where it had been to begin with, albeit with some appreciation for her ability to ferret out useful information. “What about the focus?” he asked.

“I…” Mayu glanced at Haruto, chewing on her bottom lip. “I’m not sure. There weren’t any safeguards for the focus with the Sabbath, because Koyomi was receiving all the mana.”

Another human gesture hovered at the edge of Chimera’s conscious mind; this time he wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose. He kept his hands firmly where they were. “You could die,” he said to Haruto.

“I don’t think I would,” Haruto said, demonstrating once again his lack of self-preservation.

Chimera was of the opinion that Haruto was a remarkably poor judge of personal risk, and said so. Haruto responded with wishful thinking and zero concept of a safety net. Chimera snarled at that, and stalked off to the other side of the shop.

“You’re still contracted to me,” he said, finally, stabbing a finger towards Haruto. “I can’t collect if you’re dead. I don’t want –“ His throat closed off, and it took him several moments to clear it. “I don’t want you to die,” he said, finally. Worry about someone else’s survival was a new experience for Chimera, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

Haruto crossed the floor on feet that were less steady than he was trying to let on – Chimera knew him well enough by now to be able to tell – and wrapped his arms around Chimera in what was supposed to be a comforting hug. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’m the last hope.”

“Don’t give me that line,” Chimera said, but he was holding onto Haruto tightly enough to make his arms ache. “That’s a ridiculous line.”

“It’s the truth.” Haruto pulled away, gently. Chimera didn’t want to let him go. “Everything is going to be okay,” Haruto said again, and Chimera wanted to hate him for the lie. “Will you do it?” Haruto asked, and Chimera remembered that Mayu had wanted to substitute him for a wizard providing power to the ritual.

“I’m low on mana,” he said, dodging the question. It was technically true, even if he’d eaten the remains of the Phantom he’d found Haruto fighting, in the sense that _low_ meant _not completely full_ rather than _running out_.

“I can,” Haruto started.

“Are you out of your mind?” Chimera snapped, and Haruto flinched back with a hurt expression. “Fine,” Chimera said, just to make it go away. “I’ll do it.” He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, but the way Haruto’s face lit up was almost enough to quiet his reservations. “If Yamamoto and Yuzuru agree, I’ll do it,” he amended.

Haruto hugged him again. Chimera did not feel that it was the appropriate response to his enabling Haruto to carry out a ritual that was likely to kill him.

“I still think you’re going to die,” he said, the words coming out sulky.

“You’re being overdramatic,” Haruto told him. An accusation of melodrama coming from a man who ran around making flashy entrances and declaring himself to be _the last hope_ was untenable. Chimera spluttered.

“You have no room to call anyone else dramatic,” he said, and Haruto started laughing. Chimera was not amused.

To Chimera’s quiet disappointment, not only did both Yuzuru and Yamamoto agree to assist with the ritual, but Mayu talked both of them into an attempt at sunset. Chimera eyed the sky from the window, concluding that they had a few hours of daylight left at best, which left Mayu scrambling to set up the necessary components. Haruto tried to offer help; Chimera, exchanging a look with Mayu, talked him into lying down for five minutes instead. By the end of the five minutes, Haruto was deeply enough asleep that he didn’t so much as twitch at the noise of Mayu running in and out of the shop.

Chimera provided no assistance to Mayu either; he remained with Haruto, watching the sun slowly sink toward the horizon.

“It’s time,” Mayu said, finally, standing over him with a distinctly ominous air.

“Who’s directing the ritual?” Chimera asked. They were still a person short, with four of them as power sources and Haruto as the focus.

“I am,” Mayu said.

Chimera was absolutely sure that the physical distance he remembered between where the wizards had been restrained and where the center of the stone circle was located would be enough to prevent Mayu from adequately directing anything. He shook his head; when she failed, the ritual simply wouldn’t work, and Haruto would be safe. “Haruto,” he said, and set about trying to wake Haruto up.

Mayu’s preparations, when Chimera loaded a still-groggy Haruto onto the back of his bike and followed her, included both acquisition of the Eclipse ring and relocation of the seals that had channeled the wizards’ mana during the false eclipse. She had relocated them to just outside the stone circle, facing outwards rather than inwards.

“We’re not focusing inwards this time,” she said cryptically, when Chimera pulled his bike to a halt beside hers. He hadn’t even known Mayu owned a motorcycle, much less that she knew how to drive one. The sun was low in the sky, but still clearly visible, and both Yuzuru and Yamamoto were waiting. “Is everything in place?” Mayu asked.

Chimera expected Yamamoto to answer, but it was Yuzuru who affirmed that all the components had been set up as Mayu had requested.

“You know what to do?” Mayu asked Haruto.

He removed his helmet and nodded, looking at least alert. “I’m ready,” he said, and climbed up onto the altar at the center of the stone circle.

Casting a glance over his shoulder, Chimera allowed Mayu to guide him to one of the seals. He half-expected the manacles that had accompanied the Sabbath, but Mayu just positioned him in front of the seal with his back to the pillar in front of it. “You don’t need to do anything,” she said, sympathy in her expression. “Just – let the ritual happen. Don’t fight it.”

Chimera didn’t want her pity, or her sympathy. He wanted Haruto to not pull stupid self-sacrificing stunts, but he’d given his word and he wasn’t going to back out. “Is watching people you care about do things you don’t like part of being human?” he asked quietly, not sure if he wanted Mayu to hear the question or not.

“Oh, Chimera.” The look of sympathy deepened. “We trust each other, to do the right thing. We all have to make our own choices, in the end.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I know,” Mayu said, and left him standing alone.

The sun dipped lower, a cool breeze springing up. Chimera felt it across his skin, and knew with sudden unshakable certainty that it was a premonition of failure. Stupid human brain, he tried to tell himself, but he was afraid. He could hear Mayu’s voice behind him, too low to make out any words, and Haruto replying. Chimera clenched his jaw – and he now thought of it as his, rather than borrowed, came the unbidden thought, Kosuke’s soul or no – and pressed his hands against the column behind him.

“Here goes,” Mayu said from Chimera’s left, and the setting sun went out entirely.

Chimera felt the web of the spell clearly; it reached toward him, creating a siphon to pull mana from his core and funnel it to toward the creation of a network that mirrored what Fueki had done. He gritted his teeth and consciously willed himself to let it happen, let the mana drain out of his body. It was difficult at first, when his every instinct screamed at him to pull away, but he kept the channel open.

The precise instant when spell pulled Haruto into the network echoed through Chimera, threatening his already shaky control for a brief second before he found himself swept along in its path. He was a spectator now, not a participant, and he had no more say in directing the flow of energy than a twig swept along in a flood. Haruto was the central focus now, each move he made resonating back along the web.

In the back of his mind, Chimera understood and noted that he had no sense of any of the other three wizards networked into the spell; he was only aware of Haruto and then of the Hope ring. Haruto scanned it across his Driver, linking it into the network. Its energy poured out, traveling along the pathways enabled by the darkened sun. Through Haruto, Chimera felt Hope encompass the city.

Each Gate was a single cracked drop, sealing itself back together. Alone, an individual Gate was nothing more than a brief impression, but there were hundreds. Chimera’s awareness was buffered through Haruto, but it was a strain, a weight that kept getting heavier with each passing second, and he was still locked into the ritual.

Gate by Gate, Hope sought out and repaired one broken Underworld after another, keeping a feather-light touch on every healed Gate and brushing over the rest of the population. Mana from the Gates in the network, given freely, propelled Hope while the stream of power from the center of the ritual began to falter. Chimera felt them for the first time, distantly, struggling to find more strength to keep the spell going.

Chimera was distracted enough by his own discomfort that he almost missed the subtle but steady dissolution of the Hope ring. He felt Haruto slip, first, and his awareness shifted up to the source of Haruto’s abrupt attempt to break off the spell. What are you doing, he thought distantly, but he couldn’t get his mouth to form the words.

_Haruto, don’t let it stop._

The voice echoing through the edges of Chimera’s mind was familiar, and he strained to hear it more clearly.

“If I don’t stop it, you’re -  you’re going to be – there won’t be anything left.” Haruto’s voice was as clear as if he’d been whispering directly into Chimera’s ear, and Chimera felt almost voyeuristic; Haruto wasn’t speaking to him.

 _It’s okay_ , Koyomi said. _Everything’s going to be all right._

With a flare of energy, the ritual surged forward, moving rapidly from one Gate to the next until it had reached the edge of its range. The network of mana shone brilliantly for the briefest of seconds, and Chimera’s senses were entirely overwhelmed. He lost his awareness of the ritual, of Haruto, and hung onto his sense of self by the thinnest of margins. He felt something in him seal itself together and then a weight he hadn’t known was there until it dissipated was gone.

Chimera came back to himself with a jarring thud as his knees hit the ground. He felt light and insubstantial, and his body wouldn’t quite obey his commands. His palms smacked into the stone a second later, and the second thump nudged his brain back into place. Chimera shook his head, the lag between mind and body falling away. He felt scraped raw in a way he couldn’t define, exhausted and empty around a sense of accomplishment that lasted all of half a second before he remembered that he was not alone.

“Haruto!” Chimera scrambled to his feet, running around the column toward the center of the stone circle. Distantly, he noted that the other three wizards, but he couldn’t have said if they were still moving or not. His attention was focused on the figure on its knees at the center of the altar. Haruto tipped slowly sideways, and Chimera caught him just before he collapsed completely.

“She’s gone,” Haruto said, words barely a whisper.

“You’re still here,” Chimera said. He brushed the hair out of Haruto’s eyes. “You’re still here, and it’s fine. Everything is going to be fine.”

Nothing was fine. Haruto was pale, the circles under his eyes standing out like bruises, and Chimera could feel his heart struggling to find a rhythm. Chimera reached deep inside himself, finding one last flicker of untapped mana, and fed it into Haruto. It didn’t seem to help. Chimera gave up, breathing hard, barely clinging to consciousness through the mana drain, and held Haruto closer.

The Hope ring slipped off Haruto’s finger, clattering across the altar. The stone was gone, leaving only the setting behind, and as Chimera looked at it, the setting dissolved into so much silver dust. Even the dust blew away, glittering in the final rays of the setting sun.

“She’s gone,” Haruto said again, and Chimera could feel the pain rolling off of him.

“I don’t know what to do,” Chimera whispered. A hard knot pressed against his thigh, and Chimera remembered the Joy ring. He pulled it out, the setting catching against his pocket, and slipped it over Haruto’s finger. His thoughts whirling, Chimera didn’t know if he wanted to give Haruto a reason not to let go or to make his last moments easier, but he scanned the ring across Haruto’s Driver with unsteady hands. The Driver chanted, leeching what little mana Chimera had managed to pour into Haruto, but Haruto’s expression eased.

The emptiness Chimera had been afraid of wasn’t there; Haruto just seemed calm, eyes closed. If Chimera hadn’t been able to hear the ragged edge to his breathing, he might have said Haruto looked peaceful. He knew the difference between peaceful and dying, though, and he gripped Haruto as though it would make any sort of difference at all.

 _Chimera_ , came a familiar voice, and the cold night around him fell apart.

The glittering darkness surrounding Chimera wasn’t quite Kosuke’s Underworld; it had edges and undertones of something else, an overlay obscuring memories. Chimera stood, slowly, and turned around to face the person who had called him. Kosuke stood behind him, wearing the same clothes he had been the day he’d broken the Beast Driver and tried to set Chimera free and smiling. Chimera didn’t know why he was smiling; there was nothing to smile about.

“Chimera,” Kosuke said again.

“Nitoh Kosuke.” Chimera flexed its wings, stretching them to their fullest potential, and drove its claws into the ground. After so many months, wearing its own body felt strange, the skin simultaneously too tight and too loose.

“This wasn’t what I was expecting,” Kosuke said, grinning. “But it’s been a hell of a ride.”

“What?” Chimera tilted its head to the side.

“I’ve been watching, you know,” Kosuke said.

“Watching what?” Chimera sat back, the movement sending eddies through the glow. It could almost see the hidden memories, familiar people and places so close to being recognizable before they sank back into shadow.

“You.” Kosuke put his hands on his hips, framing the Beast Driver. It was intact, shining through the dark. “You, and Haruto,” he amended.

“You’re still alive,” Chimera said. Kosuke’s soul could go back to inhabiting his body, then, giving Kosuke his life back. Inexplicably, Chimera felt a pang of loss overlaid with guilt; he had no right to Kosuke’s body, he told himself, and he’d been trying to escape it for months.

“Not exactly,” Kosuke said. “I have to go.” He rubbed at the back of his head. “Next big adventure for me, right?” He grinned again, but there was a nervous edge to it.

Chimera stepped forward, folding his wings around Kosuke before he could flinch backwards. “You’re a very interesting human, Nitoh Kosuke,” he said, and the tension melted away.

“You’ve gotten very touchy-feely,” Kosuke said, but he didn’t move. “It’s not all bad, you know. Being human.”

“I’m not human,” Chimera said automatically.

“I mean,” Kosuke said, scrubbing his fingers through his hair again. “I don’t mind, if you keep using my body. It’s not like I need it anymore.”

“I missed you.” Chimera had kept his thoughts of Kosuke deliberately suppressed; he’d gotten attached to his human host, which had in turn made it easier to get attached to other humans, but Kosuke had been first. Losing him had been harder than Chimera had thought it would be.

“I know,” Kosuke said, in a rare expression of calm and quiet. “I’m going to miss you too.” He paused. “Look after Haruto, okay?”

Chimera opened his mouth and closed it again, his wings folding flat against his back. He couldn’t look after Haruto; not any more. “I,” he started, and his throat closed. “I don’t think I can,” he said.

“Everything is going to be fine.” Kosuke reached up, stroking the underside of Chimera’s jaw. “I’ll see you around. Maybe.”

The bright-edged darkness shattered, and Chimera blinked his eyes open to a familiar ceiling. He was in Haruto’s bedroom in the antique shop, lying flat on his back. Sunlight shone through the window, illuminating little flecks of dust. Chimera watched them drift for a few seconds, half-mesmerized, until the sound of the door opening startled him into bolting upright.

Shunpei flinched backwards, nearly tripping on the floor and catching himself on the doorframe at the last second. Chimera wavered on his feet, banging his calf painfully against the edge of the bed before he found his center of balance and glared at Shunpei.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” Shunpei said, recovering first.

“I don’t sleep,” Chimera retorted, except that in Kosuke’s body he did, and he was clearly still in Kosuke’s body. It felt comfortable around him, and he knew as soon as he thought about it that he could slip free of it at any time. He didn’t want to, though, not quite yet.

“Sure,” Shunpei said agreeably, and Chimera couldn’t tell whether the boy was trying to be nonconfrontational or passive aggressively sarcastic. “There’s a Phantom and a pack of Ghouls,” Shunpei said, giving Chimera a sense of surreality. “Mayu said she could handle it, but she’s pretty tired after, uh, everything, so I thought if you were awake, you might, um. Want them.”

Chimera wasn’t entirely certain he wasn’t dreaming still.

The Phantom turned out to be loud and obnoxious, more posture than aggression, left over from Wiseman’s attempts to create Wizards instead of the aftermath of the second Sabbath, and Chimera dispatched it with almost insulting ease. Its mana filled the void inside of him, though, and the Ghouls were a satisfying bonus. Not until Chimera had finished replenishing his mana stores did it occur to him that Shunpei had completely failed to mention Haruto.

The nagging sense of unreality had faded along with the influx of mana, leaving Chimera feeling grounded and fully awake, and he made the return trip to the antique shop with a not insignificant sense of annoyance blanketing a persistent feeling of trepidation.

“Where is he?” Chimera demanded, pushing the door open.

Mayu looked up from a mug of what might have been coffee but on second scent turned out to be tea, and blinked at him as though she had no idea what he was talking about.

“Haruto,” Chimera clarified. “Where is Haruto?”


	10. Outro: Love is Not Over

Haruto woke slowly. He felt murky, limbs simultaneously heavier than anything he could lift and so light he thought they might float away if they weren’t held down by an even gentle pressure covering him from neck to toes. The first glimmer of awareness faded almost as soon as it had fully formed, driving him back into formless peace.

The second time, Haruto was awake long enough to open his eyes to a familiar face grinning at him from above a turquoise vest. “I thought you were dead,” he tried to say to Kosuke, but his voice wouldn’t come out above a hoarse whisper, and the effort it took to speak pulled him back into the darkness. He had the briefest impression of fingers ghosting along his hair before it faded.

Three was the magic number; Haruto opened his eyes, thoughts more or less clear, and found that someone had decided it was a good idea to dump him in a hospital while he’d been asleep. He was not pleased, despite the shakiness he could still feel from having his mana drained to the literal dregs, particularly since he couldn’t quite remember what had happened that he had used so much mana in the first place. His last memory was confessing to Chimera that he was in love with him and being rejected, and then arguing with the Phantom about – the bottom dropped out of Haruto’s stomach as the details of the conversation started seeping back.

“Chimera knows how the abnormal Phantoms are being made,” Haruto said, just to see if he could. The words came out clearly enough, although his throat was dry and it felt like there was something in it. He’d been trying to figure out how to find the Gates before it was too late, but everything after the conversation with Chimera was a blur. Haruto knew there had been something else, but he couldn’t bring up details of what, precisely, it had been. He put it aside; finding the Gates was more important, no matter how little mana it felt like he had.

Trying to get out of the bed was a whole new exercise in frustration; not only had someone seen fit to drag him to a hospital, but all sorts of extraneous tubes and wires had been attached to him while he was there. Haruto started pulling them out, starting with the soft tube that was, in fact, lodged in his throat and taped to his cheek. That one made him gag twice, once during the actual removal and the second time for the scent of the bile dripping out of the far end. He dropped it on the floor with a shudder.

Getting rid of the rest of the things attached to him set off a series of alarms that brought first one and then several more people running. Haruto nodded and smiled politely and dodged the hands that kept trying to put the monitors back onto him. It was harder than it should have been, but he wasn’t about to stay where he was. He knew perfectly well how much mana he could lose, and how to handle mana depletion. He’d essentially made a career out of it, and he wasn’t about to let someone else tell him differently.

Haruto’s statement that he was leaving brought a fresh round of protest, but he found his clothes in a plastic bag in a cupboard at the foot of the bed, and got himself dressed without incident. He was tired enough when he finished that he thought if he lay back down he would fall right back to sleep, but he wasn’t about to admit it. He continued to politely and firmly tell the hospital staff that he was leaving, over their protests, until they brought him whatever paperwork he needed to sign himself out.

The phrase _against medical advice_ gave him pause for half a second, and he looked up at _Mr. Soma, you’ve been unconscious for a week_ , but none of it was going to stop him from going. Haruto had a moment of doubt when Chimera appeared in the doorway, brows drawn together and mouth compressed into a thin line, but Chimera just sighed at the attempt to recruit him into the argument for Haruto to stay put.

“Other people don’t cause this much trouble,” he said to Haruto, handing him a glass of water.

“How would you know,” Haruto said, emptying the glass. It took most of the awful taste out of his mouth. “You don’t spend time around other people.”

“I spent plenty of time watching other people while you weren’t here,” Chimera said, but he walked Haruto out of the hospital doors and drove him back to the antique shop on the back of his bike. It felt familiar, although Haruto was fairly sure he’d never ridden on Chimera’s bike before.

The shop was empty, the sign in the door reading _Closed_. Haruto frowned at it. “Why is the shop closed?” he asked. It was the middle of the afternoon, and it should have been open.

Chimera shrugged. “Something about shrines and New Year,” he said.

“New Year?” Haruto blinked. “It’s New Year’s Day?”

“You were gone for a week,” Chimera said, but that still didn’t make the dates add up. Haruto had confessed to Chimera on Christmas Eve, he was sure of it. There was an entire day missing.

“Eight days?” he hazarded, as Chimera shut the cold air out.

“Seven,” Chimera said impatiently, turning to peer into his face. “I’m beginning to think I should have left you in the hospital.”

Haruto ducked away, not tripping over the step up into the shop itself only because he remembered at the last second that it was there. “Seven doesn’t make sense,” he muttered under his breath, and then at a normal volume, “We still need to find the Gates.”

“What did you just say?” There was no intonation; Chimera’s voice was absolutely flat. Haruto glanced over his shoulder to see Chimera staring at him, frozen in the act of removing his jacket.

“I said, we still have to find the Gates,” Haruto repeated. “And then figure out how to stop their Underworlds from deteriorating.”

Chimera paled. Jacket forgotten, he grabbed Haruto by the shoulders. Haruto struggled, but he didn’t quite have the strength to break free. Chimera glared at him, looking at his eyes and touching his face in a bizarre parody of the act of seeing if someone was all right. “What’s the last thing you remember?” Chimera asked, and he did not look pleased when Haruto told him.

“It’s fine,” Haruto said, although memory loss hadn’t been part of mana depletion before. He was fairly sure he hadn’t forgotten anything after he’d woken up to argue with the hospital staff.

“Nothing about this is fine,” Chimera said, and all but shoved him onto the couch before telling him exactly what he had done.

Haruto started digging his nails into his palms halfway through the recitation, and Chimera’s blunt description of what he had done to Koyomi hit him like a punch to the gut. He couldn’t breathe for a moment, long enough that he could see Chimera start to panic. It was the unfamiliar sight that unlocked his chest, letting him draw in air and exhale it on what was so close to a shuddering sob as made no difference.

“She said it was all right,” Chimera said, not unkindly.

 _The resting place you found for me is in the hearts of hundreds of people who will be alive because we helped them_ , echoed Koyomi’s voice. _I couldn’t ask for anything better._ It might have been a memory, or it might have been wishful thinking, but Haruto clung to the words until the prickling against his eyelids faded and he could breathe freely again. He resolutely put the thoughts and memories of Koyomi away. Someday he would be able to think of her without pain, and be able to honor her memory; for now, he would hold onto those feelings without looking at them.

“I’m sorry,” he said, when he thought he could speak again.

“For what?”

“For – for all of this.” Haruto gestured toward himself. “For making you – for all of it.”

“I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do,” Chimera said, which, on reflection, might even have been true. Haruto shrugged anyway.

“I promised to help you,” he said. “And then I told you I was in love with you instead, after dragging you halfway across the country and then back to Tokyo to deal with a major crisis, and here you are, dealing with the aftermath.”

“Why is this so hard for you?” Chimera buried his face in his hands. “I’m here because I want to be here, Haruto. If I didn’t want to be with you, I would already be gone.”

“But,” Haruto said helplessly. The words coming out of Chimera’s mouth didn’t make any sense.

“Nitoh Kosuke is no longer holding me here,” Chimera said. “I chose to stay. With you.”

“But,” Haruto said again. “But you said – I asked if you felt the same way, and you said you didn’t know.”

“Of course I don’t know if it’s the same!” Chimera threw his hands in the air in a very human gesture. “How should I know what is and isn’t the same? Phantoms and humans feel things differently!”

Haruto worked his mouth, trying to speak, but nothing came out.

“You look like a fish,” Chimera said. “Stop that.”

Haruto closed his mouth, opting to glare at Chimera instead. “I’ll show you fish,” he muttered, his voice choosing the wrong moment to start working again.

“Humanity is an interesting experience,” Chimera said. “I’ve decided I’m not ready to let it go. Or you.”

“You like me,” Haruto said, the idea finally beginning to sink in.

“Yes,” Chimera said irritably. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. And show you.”

Even with everything that had happened over the past few days – weeks, Haruto reminded himself – he couldn’t stop the smile that he could feel spreading across his face until it hurt. “You like me,” he repeated.

“Are you sure you don’t have brain damage?”

Haruto didn’t think Chimera was serious. He was fairly certain. He reached for Chimera, pulling him into a kiss. Chimera met him halfway, keeping the contact brief and resting his forehead against Haruto’s. “Pretty sure,” Haruto said, and Chimera rolled his eyes.

“Don’t you have a room upstairs for that?”

Haruto hadn’t heard the door open, but the entrance of the shop was full; Wajima, Shunpei, Mayu, and Rinko all stood in a loose knot, openly watching him with Chimera. Haruto didn’t move away, although common sense dictated that he should.

Mayu nudged Rinko, who had been the one to speak. “More importantly, weren’t you in the hospital an hour ago? They let you go already?”

“Yes,” Haruto said, before Chimera could say anything. Chimera was the one who sat up straight, turning around to see the crowd of Haruto’s found family clearly.

“He’s stubborn,” Chimera said. “Willful. Reckless. Insistent on having his own way.”

“Ah. Well. That he is.” Wajima stepped into the shop first, giving Chimera a look that wasn’t quite fond, but had at least traces of genuine warmth to it. As if that had broken a dam, the other three piled inside, talking excitedly and animatedly.

Haruto leaned against Chimera, the other putting an arm around his shoulders to hold him close, and kept to the edges of the conversation. It would take time, to reconcile the fragile sense of balance between the loss of Koyomi and the new warmth of what he’d started with Chimera, but he had his friends and family around him. He didn’t need a physical representation of hope to be able to feel it in his heart, or to bring it to others. Haruto tucked his feet underneath himself and listened. For all that he had tried to represent hope to others, for all the times he’d stood as a bulwark against despair to protect the potential Gates, he hadn’t been able to look forward to his own future. He twined his fingers around Chimera’s, feeling the gentle pressure of Chimera’s grip, and thought that maybe, after all of it, he was finally able to feel a flicker of hope for himself.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)


End file.
